Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group. Reflections on the Future of Supply and Demand Chain
The Automation Imperative Leading consumer-focused businesses are automating their warehouse networks, generating step changes in service and cost performance. Some companies have already unlocked 20% to 50% improvement in service levels while generating a 25% to 50% reduction in fulfillment costs—all while boosting their resilience amid today’s acute labor shortages. Despite these success stories, however, many… Continue reading Amplify Your Warehouse Automation ROI
I recently had an opportunity to give a panel presentation at Innovation Endeavor's LINK Supply Chain Ecosystem Day. The panel focused on the future of the global supply chain during a time of continual disruption. There was a palpable sense of urgency in the room. After all, challenges facing the supply chain today only seem… Continue reading Supply Chain Automation in an Age of Disruption
My colleague Arnold Kogan and I presented at the FMI Fresh Foods Leadership Council meeting in Orlando last week. We discussed the emerging challenges plaguing the retail landscape and how leaders are transforming the supply chain for the post pandemic future. The New Norm Post COVID Supply chain performance suffered starting 2020 due to a… Continue reading Transforming the Supply Chain for the Post Pandemic Future
Consumer packaged goods (CPG) are feeling tremendous pressure in 2019. Increased demand volatility and shorter lead times from retailers have become major concerns, hurting service and inventory levels. Under Pressure, CPG supply chains look to digital. Although CPG companies have not historically operated at the forefront of digital change, the intense and competing demands they… Continue reading Under Pressure: CPG Supply Chains Look to Digital
Uber-like on-demand fulfillment platforms for supply chain and and logistics services are rapidly emerging. For companies feeling the pressure to meet rising customer expectations while keeping costs down, uberized supply chains could bring much-needed relief. Uberization, the business paradigm that disrupted the taxicab industry, is about to transform supply chains everywhere as companies increasingly rely… Continue reading Supercharging Supply Chains with Platforms
Computer vision is the lynchpin of the current AI/machine learning (ML) renaissance. In 2013, deep learning based vision solutions crossed a historic milestone of achieving human level accuracy. Since then, the pace of algorithm sophistication, training data proliferation and performance has accelerated even faster. The majority of AI/machine learning powered solutions and use cases across… Continue reading What is the Case for Machine Vision in Supply Chain?
2013 was a watershed year for Industry 4.0, moving from the concept pages to becoming strategic pillars of investment across both governments and businesses. That same year, deep learning neural nets achieved human level accuracy for the first time in history, signaling the arrival of disruptive digital manufacturing use cases. Since then, we have seen… Continue reading The Human Element in Digital Industry 4.0
While Augmented Reality (AR) is gaining significant attention as one of the Industry 4.0 technologies that will revolutionize supply chain, we believe it is important to look beyond the hype and qualify the true potential and challenges. The value of AR is directly tied to its ability to impact human workforce experience and performance. Consider… Continue reading What is the Case for AR/VR in Supply Chain?
Demands on supply chains are ever increasing as companies vie to deliver more personalized products, with faster lead time, at a lower cost. Further, unexpected execution conditions continually disrupt operational performance. For these reasons and more (see our recent MIT Sloan Management Review article), companies must do more than digitize supply chains. They must also develop operational ability… Continue reading Sense and Pivot Supply Chain @ MIT Media Lab
Even today’s most sophisticated supply chains still try to predict what will happen, then optimize performance against plan. The problem is, the world is not predictable. It is filled with the unforeseen. To meet soaring customer demands in this erratic world, companies need to build a whole new kind of supply chain, fast. Supply chains are… Continue reading Why Future Supply Chains Must Sense and Pivot
Digital transformation?? Oh, not again! Everything seems to be a digital transformation today and there’s nothing left under the sun that hasn’t been written about such disruptive change. We felt the need to demystify digital transformation and separate the truths from the misconceptions based on our hands-on experience: (1) Start with the external customer Focusing… Continue reading Eight Misconceptions of Going Digital
While A.I. and machine learning has made rapid progress in consumer facing applications such as Amazon Alexa, playing Go, and making art, its deployment across the enterprise is still emerging and uneven. Opinions differ on the scope and pace of A.I. to automate and enhance activities across the organization. On one end, a recent Oxford… Continue reading 4 Facts Every Business Leader Must Know About AI Automation
AI is the darling of the moment and the corporate meme-stream. So much so, it’s forcing some CFOs into tough discussions with executive teams that are overly anxious to gamble with current assets in hopes of gaining future competitive advantages. How can companies avoid overspending in AI? AI certainly holds serious potential, even as research continues to… Continue reading How to Avoid Overspending on AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a fast-moving technology with a long road ahead of it. For all its surrounding hype, AI is still in its infancy. Intelligent systems have moved from simple, rule-based tasks such as spell-check into narrow machine-learning activities such as predictive maintenance and work automation, but they remain far from their ultimate destiny… Continue reading Will You Embrace AI Fast Enough?
I held a podcast this week with Supply Chain Management Review on the topic of AI in Planning. We discussed the structural complexities facing demand and supply planning functions today and the imminent role of AI and machine learning. You can view the podcast below: Key takeaways Businesses across all sectors are pressuring supply chains to… Continue reading AI in Supply Chain Planning – Podcast
Michael Hu | BCG 