Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group. Reflections on the Future of Supply and Demand Chain
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 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?
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
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
I gave a panel presentation at the Bernstein "Motor of eCommerce" Conference last week in London. We discussed two trends that will significantly impact on the eCommerce supply chain dynamics in the near term horizon Direct-to-Consumer: Brands across many categories are accelerating their pace of selling directly to consumer (DTC). In the past several years, Brands… Continue reading Bernstein Motor of eCommerce Conference
One question we often get from clients is “Will Amazon disrupt my sector next”? – be it in Fresh, CPG, Beauty, Apparel, or even Industrials. Amazon recently made several strategic moves, that taken in unison, strongly suggest that Fast Fashion is square and center in its disruption cross-hairs. Can Amazon be a Zara slayer? First… Continue reading Amazon the Zara Slayer
Michael Hu | BCG 