Procurement officers are tasked with building reliable supply chains. In addition, changing consumer sentiment and government regulations have brought unprecedented attention to supply chain practices. Business data can help companies manage supplier relationships and comply with ethical sourcing laws. Learn about important supply chain topics, including human trafficking and how procurement officers manage these risks.
The field of logistics is composed of many positions. Purchasing officers, warehouse managers, supply chain experts, compliance analysts, and transportation coordinators are just a sample of common job titles. Programmers and data analysts will become increasingly important as more companies try to integrate data and analytics into their operations.
Ethical concerns are of keen interest to procurement officers. Every attempt must be made to avoid doing business with companies that violate environmental laws, exploit labor or engage in corrupt practices. The scale and complexity of supply chains can help unethical companies hide their behavior, but technology empowers logistics professionals to evaluate and monitor suppliers like never before.
Online compliance solutions can flag potential warning signs, such as a manufacturer with factories in countries known to turn a blind eye towards forced labor. Insights into key officers and corporate families may also reveal a high risk for compliance violations.
Logistics stands to benefit greatly from technological innovations like the Internet of Things, or IoT. Visibility into every stop along the supply chain helps companies identify inefficiencies and manage risk. The technologies listed below have major implications for logistics, and many are already in use:
Factories can monitor the performance of machinery in real time. Predictive analytics allow manufacturers to estimate when components will fail so that they can be replaced ahead of time.
Radio-frequency identification tags can be attached to vehicle parts, products, packages, or even railcars in order to establish their origin, list contents, or track movement.
Information gathered from the factory floor, ports, warehouses, and roadways gives logistics professionals greater transparency into operations. Predictive analytics and artificial intelligence promise to anticipate challenges and opportunities with minimal human oversight.
Machines can already locate boxes and load containers. Advances in both their physical and computational abilities will lead to increased efficiency in packaging and storing goods.
Unmanned drones and driverless vehicles will soon be transporting supplies and delivering products. Limited only by a need for fuel and electricity, these machines may be able to work longer hours than their human counterparts. This would decrease the time it takes for a product to get from the factory to the customer’s door.
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