The past decade has seen major breakthroughs in technology and though there have been really great strides, the pace of innovation in technology is still on at an ever increasing pace.
Here are some present and rapidly advancing supply chain technologies that you should keep an eye on in 2021.
WMS
Warehouse Management Systems are software solutions that offer visibility into a business’ entire inventory to manage supply chain fulfillment operations from the distribution center to the end user. Online marketplaces have enabled the customers to buy anywhere, deliver anywhere and return anywhere. Warehouse management systems enable easier inventory management to cater to these new needs of the global marketplace.
Blockchain
Blockchain continues to be a high interest solution and with the governments of Bahrain and UAE adopting blockchain in their pharmaceutical supply chain, we can only hope for this to get better and more prominent. Immutable blocks provide the needed security and integrity of data and overlaying the blockchain on the internet reduces the cost of information sharing between the different parties.
IoT (Internet of Things)
IoTs and sensors now gather data from many different data points – from tracking inventory to feeding information in an analytical system, there is now the possibility of having even greater visibility for products that are at rest and also those that are in transit.
5G
The communication of data is not possible and not constant without a medium that can transmit large amounts of data; fast. 5G, the next generation in telecom industry promises to provide just that, further complementing the IoT deployments. For example, IoT sensors on trucks can provide real-time visibility of the movement of materials.
Big Data
A Massive amount of data is generated everyday. Millions of searches on google, millions of text messages and emails sent every minute and simultaneous data generated by numerous different data points like sensors and machines. Collecting all data in unstructured form forms the basis of further analytics that helps provide demand and supply based decision making.
AI and Machine Learning
Advances in AI technology including the processing of natural language commands has led to the technology’s increased usage in many different supply chain implementations. AI and machine learning helps provide fully automated and semi-automated solutions freeing up the human capital in certain routine and repetitive tasks. For example an AI chatbot implementation can assist in providing users the location of their parcels based on the provided tracking number.
The Cloud
Companies track materials and products throughout the supply chain. This is made possible with the storage of data on the cloud and over geographically distributed servers to speed up the replication of updates. This helps in optimizing data storage space, integrity and security of data.
At CosmoTrace, we offer premium support and services that can help your business with serialization implementation. Our team of experts will make sure you are up to date with all global traceability regulations and will help in creating a successful long-term serialization strategy.