A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Cloud will change supply chain… The question is when?

Cloud will change supply chain… The question is when?
Oleg
Oleg
17 September, 2012 | 2 min for reading

For many years, supply chain was a space that drove lots of attention. One of the major trends, I can see for the last decade of manufacturing transformation is an increased granularity and optimization among the value chain. Design supply, manufacturing supply chain optimization and many other things in this space are raising many questions and interest of software vendors and customers. Earlier this year, the following article caught my attention – Apple Turns Over Its Entire Inventory Every 5 Days. I think, the number is impressive. Here is a very interesting passage:

Gartner’s Supply Chain Top 25 table rates companies on their return on assets, their inventory turn metric, revenue growth, and votes by analysts and peers. Overall, Apple sits right at the top of the table, with a composite score 40% higher than Amazon, which sits in second place.McDonald’s is the only company in the world that turns over its inventory faster than Apple, and let’s face it, that’s largely because most of its stock doesn’t last five days. But its quite incredible when you consider how many countries Apple serves, and how many products it offers, that it doesn’t stockpile certain goods.

So, the question I want to ask today is what will bring a big change in supply chain space? I was reading blog article written by Allan Behrens’ of Taxal – On the topic of Cloud… “where to now the channel”? Have a read and make your opinion. No surprise to me, Allan sees a cloud as a main disrupter in a supply chain. Here is a quote:

I for one believe that the Cloud era heralds significant change in the IT industry… and in the dynamics of its supply chain. The question is not ‘if’, but ‘how much’ and ‘when’. Discussions with software and hardware companies reflect widely varying sentiments on what and how to deliver; moreover fear (of reducing margins), uncertainty (of product and supplier intentions) and doubt (of customer take-up) are amongst the issues that constrain many partners’ deeper involvement in Cloud opportunities.

What is my conclusion? I certainly agree with Allan about how he positioned his question about supply chain. The question is not “if”, but “when” the cloud will disrupt supply chain. At the same time, in order to disrupt the supply chain with the cloud solutions, we need to pass a long way alongside of development of cloud information infrastructure and technology. Security and information sharing needs to be improved. However, the most important transformation is about people’s mind. Sharing information culture is still in a very early stage. Yes, we can share photos via Facebook. A decade ago, the modern way to share our private information online would be shocking. Some kind of similar transformation must happen in all aspects of business information sharing. We are still not there… yet. Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
16 June, 2014

To connect relevant pieces of information is one of the long time dreams developed by many PLM vendors. The pieces...

22 August, 2012

Migration. This is a word any IT and PDM/PLM manager is afraid to hear. In my view, it is one...

3 May, 2017

One of the biggest challenges for PLM vendors is to extend their product usage beyond engineering applications. Even we can...

23 October, 2017

I’m learning more about Solidworks PDM development trajectories. If you missed my previous blog posts, you can catch up here...

4 November, 2015

Part numbers. This is probably one of the most discussed topic in manufacturing and related software domains. How to define...

15 July, 2009

One of the things that can drive PLM user adoption is ability to provide solution to a bigger user audience....

29 December, 2020

This time of the year is a great opportunity to reflect on multiple topics. My article last week – PLM...

20 September, 2019

The weekend is coming and this is a time for some PLM dramas. Engineering.com and Verdi Ogewell is usually not...

18 December, 2014

Few months ago, I posted about latest development of Kenesto cloud data management solutions – Kenesto revamp: does it change...

Blogroll

To the top