5 Must Have Capabilities For Resilient Supply Chains In Retail

These disruptions created various supply chain challenges depending on the nature of business, product and geographical diversity, supply and production sources, supply chain network complexity, logistics network, and operational capacity.

The key challenges that businesses faced included demand uncertainty, managing inventory levels, a lack of visibility in product scheduling and capacity constraints, in managing the supplier ecosystem and identifying alternate suppliers, a shift to remote working, and blocked working capital and cash flow. These disruptions revealed the brittle side of global supply chain practices and capabilities.

Retailers should incorporate resilience into supply chains by investing in digital supply chain capabilities to sense, predict, learn, and respond to disruptions:

In the first place, establish end-to-end visibility of supply and demand data across the value chain.

Second, effectively monitor risk with early detection and rapid response systems, real-time scenario analysis, and intelligently evaluate alternatives to troubleshoot exceptions.

Third, automate all business operations and transactions with accurate data to boost productivity and decision making.

Fourth, undertake scientific management of inventory through AI modeled decision and optimization techniques powered by real-time data and cognitive analysis.

Finally, establish digitally connected supplier ecosystems to share data upstream and downstream, and detect supply risks at an early stage.

Retailers should invest in five key capabilities to build resilience via data-driven supply chains, click here to learn more.

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