Five key trends shaping the supply chain management.

Byline: Ahsan Nisar

Today's businesses have increasingly become fast-paced. Highly demanding customers seek instant gratification on one side, and businesses, in a quest to do more with the finite resources on hand, try to optimize and accelerate their supply chain, on the other side. All this means not just larger volumes to process, but also a significant increase in the number of issues warehouse and logistics management needs to deal within a day. Side-by-side, competitive pressures means squeezed margins, leaving warehouses without the luxury of spending more to cater to the increased workload.

Logistics is a precision business, where success depends on making accurate moves at the right time. A high level of contextual awareness backed up by highly optimized processes are the essential ingredients of success. Efficiency is the end result, which comes as a result of such heightened levels of workflow optimization, allowing companies to streamline their logistical operations right from its core.

The technological development particularly in the past two decades is enabling logistics industry to continually evolve. Logistics, supply chain, and parcel delivery are at the forefront of tech adoption. History reveals that the companies which fail to adopt latest trends in logistics cease to exist because competitors outperform them. Although technology brings a range of capabilities to this industry, yet some technologies and approaches would be the key players in the upcoming times. Supply chains around the world are being transformed.

External pressures, technology trends and internal evolution are prompting companies to reevaluate their network to determine how their future supply chain should be structured, both in terms of capacity and capabilities. There are following four main categories of broad ongoing trends that will impact the supply chain of the future.

1. Emerging technologies

2. Focus on supply chain visibility

3. Sharing economy

4. Evolving customer channels

Following are the five most notable technologies capable of refining logistics operations:

RFID Systems

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in logistics has potential particularly in route optimization, and the real-time tracking of goods. When effectively integrated, RFID systems can provide precise location and quantity data in real-time. For instance, tagging trucks, pallets, and inventory provide multi-lateral views of what is happening across the supply chain. The...