The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Some Supply Chain Managers Just Don’t Get It

I just read an interesting article, with the above title, in SCMR (Supply Chain Management Review) online. The author talks about all the right stuff - independent processes and data points in the supply chain becoming a series of inter-connected nodes sharing real-time data.

The revolution is coming but I think we need to be realistic about when it will arrive. I think it will arrive a widely different times for different firms and their industries. The Fortune 500 or Global 1000 will have a different timeline than the small-to-medium enterprise (SME).

I spend a lot of time in the SME market space where I still see a large proportion of companies running major aspects of their business on MS-Excel, non-integrated software, and manual processes. While I believe in the technology and benefits of Supply Chain 4.0 in this article, and many similar ones, the company that is still doing a once-a-month update of inventory into their custom in-house MS-Access application or spreadsheet is not going to be participating any time soon.

We need to remember that the vast portion (80%+) of businesses are SME's. Some have great processes and systems. Too many do not. We need to work on helping the less fortunate, so to speak.

COMMENTS WELCOME.

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