Further thoughts

More and more supply chain practitioners focus on the idea of robustness, as opposed to just-in-time. It goes beyond the aspect of being resilient. Robustness is how you make sure that even if you encounter a failure, you can still deliver.

Jean-Philippe Lebudel

Chief Supply Chain Officer,

Firmenich

Supply chain digitalization is an important shift to be made. A factory may be well connected, with great leadership and ERP system, however with many you find that the demand planning is weak or broken. Blockchain has the potential to improve connections and shorten lead times.

Manju Parkhe

Group Vice President,

Ecolab

Creating any digital ecosystem is not just thinking about current compliance, risk and standard protocols, or for one part of the global market. You need to focus on future-proofing, as much as possible, in order to be agile and fit for purpose worldwide.

Eunice Alcantara

Health Care Compliance Officer, Latin America J&J Supply Chain,

Johnson &Johnson

A mindset shift is needed. You need to help people understand that the work environment is digitally evolving. Once they grasp this, they will have a better understanding that reskilling and upskilling is in response to creating the business environment we want to evolve in order to win.

Christophe Villain

Global Head of Supply Chain & Procurement Technology,

Nestlé

When planning, it’s important to identify the different skill sets needed to run and support the technology. Any programme is usually cross-functional, and it plays a big part in the success of digitalization that you know the competencies, alignment and cultural change needed.

Donna Kuenzler

Head of Procurement Process Excellence & Digital Transformation,

ABB

Digitalization is currently the weakest part in the supply chain process.

Jose Everaldo Morelli

Logistic Director,

Robert Bosch Tool Corporation

We are working towards digitalization. On the customer side, this means getting more things online for customers and enabling automatic confirmations on purchases. We are also looking to make improvements by digitizing processes, meaning certain things are carried out by bots or robots, AI.

Pei-laan Chao

Head of Finished Goods Planning Market Group Europe,

Signify

You have to move away from PoV’s and pilots, showcasing what the transformation would look like. Present that five-year plan, that three-year plan, that one year plan. Break it down and decide if you want technology or process to lead the journey, and then follow through.

Riaan Pienaar

Head of Supply Chain

Instead of focusing on the technologies themselves, we need to focus on the problem first and then figure out how we are going to solve that problem. Collaboration among disparate groups is vitally important to success.

Kenneth Creasy

Senior Director, Manufacturing Technology & Innovation and Advanced Engineering,

Johnson &Johnson

We can simplify our supply chain through less connections, less processes and less paperwork, reducing our inventory burden. There is a digital way to achieve all this and continually improve at the same time.

Jason VanDeven

Head Of Global Supply Chain, AOX,

Northrop Grumman

In the supply chain, it takes a village to do something efficiently. For example, each country has certain expertise, and to build an optimal supply chain, one needs to take advantage of all those strengths. Bring everything together and put the right part in the right place with the right quantity.

Dharmesh Kumar

Acting Director - Supply Chain Portfolio, Architecture and Development

When you put in place systems and new processes to optimize value and benefit, you need to make sure that you have the right data literacy and analytics capability in the organization. You’re dependent upon people being able to adapt to new opportunities that the systems offer you.

Håvard Jørgensen

Vice President Global Supply Chain,

Electrolux

There will be a lot of focus on the digital supply chain to see the end-to-end system ahead of time. ESG goals are important as they want to be sustainable in packaging, ethical sources, carbon neutral, especially with younger generations.

Deepa D

Director Global Supply Chain at a leading medical manufacturing organization

The need for Automation has increased post-pandemic due to the risk associated with over dependence on human processes. The driver has shifted from efficiency (cost saving) to increased business resilience through automation.

Zera Zheng

Global Head of Business Resilience Lead Logistics,

A.P. Moller - Maersk

Understanding the end-to-end value stream and flow and then balancing the speeds, rate and yields are all obvious. But digitization, making data available, and training the end-user to use the data should also be part of the focus.

Michael Muilenburg

Director - Operational Technology & Connected Manufacturing - Film, Materials, Technology, and Eng.,

3M

Sales is a key input to any DSC optimization. Having an accurate view of sales pipeline has a far bigger and more positive impact on cash flow than reactively managing inventory.

Ciprian Florea

Senior Director Solutions - Intelligent Industry

Digitization is bringing technology to the table in order to develop new products, new value propositions, new ways of working, and new value streams. This is the most important thing currently going on in the industry.

Henning Udo Goldmann

Senior Advisor

Next: Acknowledgements

Share this page