Top 5 Supply Chain Technology Trends to Look Out For

The accurate structure of an e-commerce supply chain means data transparency and customer satisfaction. There are numerous ways to optimize your supply chain management to adjust it to e-commerce trends. What technology that shape the current supply chain operations to look out for? Let’s read our article!

Blockchain

Associated with cryptocurrency first, blockchain technology is a system in which a record of transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency is maintained across several computers that are linked in a peer-to-peer network.

How can blockchain relate to supply chain operations? Blockchain technology implements the need for secure transactions and the demand for data transparency. Since it provides an immutable record of transactions, blockchain is well adjusted to monitor the provenance of products and ensure trust in shared supplier data.

The technology can help entrepreneurs to keep track of products and financial transactions and manage contracts and agreements more efficiently and significantly reduce the time, necessary for processing invoices and shipments.

Digital supply chain twin

This technology in supply chain management is gaining momentum. The digital supply chain twin (DSCT) is a virtual simulation of the physical supply chain, aimed at getting a full picture of its performance and facilitating decision-making. Such an approach to supply chain automation can help merchants to manage resources more efficiently, make decisions in alignment with business objectives, and increase supply chain agility. From the digital supply chain twin, analysts can get insights into the supply chain’s behavior, predict risks, and work out the action plan immediately.

The digital supply chain twin can be used for the following operations:

• Assessment of supply chain dynamics and performance
• Bottleneck identification
• Monitoring risk and emergency situations
• Inventory management optimization
• Forecasting and testing operations over the coming days and weeks

Augmented data intelligence

Human reporting is gradually becoming a relic of the past. As the business grows and supply chains become more complex, they create the need for enhanced approaches to analytics and reporting. In supply chains, augmented data intelligence assists in lowering time-consuming and repetitive tasks, associated with report development, and delivering more insightful data, predictions, and suggestions.

How does this technology in supply chain management work in practice? When an organization chooses a cargo vehicle, usually it takes much time to come up with the decision, based on multiple factors, such as routes and schedules of the vehicles. With augmented intelligence, logistics planners can make faster and more accurate decisions, due to which increases customer loyalty and retention.

Robotics

The incorporation of robots into the supply chain network is one more supply chain management trend that greatly contributes to the decrease in human errors, particularly in warehousing and manufacturing. By 2026, 75% of large enterprises will have adopted some form of intralogistics smart robots in their warehouse operations.

Robots can deliver a considerable value to e-commerce supply chain performance, for example:

• Enhanced speed and accuracy of routine operations
• The path toward safer working conditions
• Decreased long-term costs
• Increased worker productivity

3D printing

Customers highly appreciate a personalized approach to their e-commerce journey. Thus, 3D printing is one of the leading trends in corresponding to made-to-order demand. It is a business production strategy that allows clients to purchase items that are customized to their specifications.

3D printing can be used to produce replacement parts for products with the use of metal and plastics. Instead of keeping items in warehouses, e-commerce companies can cooperate with local 3D printing vendors to produce a particular product within several days.

Hence, with 3D printing, merchants are able to reduce supply complexity, fasten the product’s time to market, support sustainability by limiting the shipping of products across the globe, and simply boost customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

There are a number of reasons to automate your supply chain performance: high data transparency, improved resource coordination, better analytics and reports as well as decision-making. Fortunately, now there are many supply chain technologies available to sharpen your business operations.

At Dinarys, we use our business expertise in supply chain management automation along with technical experience in the field of e-commerce innovations to deliver top-notch e-commerce development services.

Contact us today. As an Adobe Solution Partner, we offer end-to-end Magento integration solutions to automate your daily routine tasks and manage your supply chain processes easily and completely.