GS1 US now manages and maintains the GS1 US Color and Size Codes, a database that allows suppliers, manufacturers and retailers to codify product color and size, enabling more consistent and efficient data exchange in retail. Formerly managed by the National Retail Federation (NRF), the color and size codes are available electronically for either a $250 one-time purchase from GS1 US or via three GS1 US Solution Partners: OpenText, InterTrade and SPS Commerce.

The codes have been used in retail systems for more than three decades to help industry consistently identify and classify products by size and color. The codes also provide a common language for product color and size identification for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), a process that allows companies to exchange business information such as orders and invoices electronically. Using these standardized codes, retailers, brands and manufacturers can reduce errors due to manual data entry, cut down on new item setup times and allow for automated sales analysis by size and color, which helps guide merchandise assortment planning.

“The color and size codes are a natural fit with the host of other resources that GS1 US provides to members to ensure greater efficiency in inventory management processes,” said Michelle Covey, vice president of partnerships, GS1 US. “Additionally, by partnering with GS1 US Solution Partners, we can extend the value of the codes to be more widely accessible in real time, adding to product data accuracy and boosting trading partner efficiency.” 

Now that the codes have been transitioned from NRF, GS1 US will continue to work with the retail community through the GS1 US Apparel and General Merchandise Initiative to keep the codes updated and in line with current consumer-driven trends affecting the retail industry. The GS1 US Apparel and General Merchandise Initiative is a collaborative industry group that works to develop resources and guidelines based on GS1 Standards to solve supply chain challenges.

For more information about the GS1 US Color and Size Codes, please visit www.gs1us.org/color-size-codes.  For more information about the GS1 US Solution Partner program, please visit www.gs1us.org/what-we-do/partners.

According to ARC, there is a new collaboration between IBM and a Norwegian Seafood company to bring blockchain technology to the seafood industry. 

IBM and Sjømatbedriftene, the Norwegian Seafood Association, announced a new cross-industry collaboration to use blockchain technology to share supply chain data throughout Norway's seafood industry to provide safer, better seafood to consumers worldwide.

Read the article on ARC

The global pandemic is accelerating companies' plans to incorporate touchless technology, reports Warc.

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing a reappraisal of much of the technology we use in public spaces and is also accelerating automation efforts in logistics and the supply chain; a recent report predicts the market for next-generation logistics systems in Japan is set to more than double to ¥651 billion from 2018 to 2025.

Read the article on Warc

Blockchain is being used in the wine supply chain to prevent fraud, reports Coin Telegraph.

Tampering, theft and counterfeiting have caused the wine industry millions of dollars in lost revenue. Symbol, an enterprise-friendly blockchain project from the NEM ecosystem is now providing blockchain technology amid further frauds in wine productions, according to a blog post published by NEM on July 4.

Read the article on Coin Telegraph

The Institute for Supply Management found that nearly 75 percent of the companies it contacted in late February and early March reported some kind of supply-chain disruption due to the coronavirus. Supply chain and logistic challenges due to the global pandemic are still making it difficult for companies to address their expanding big data capacity requirements, and purchase and provision more servers as needed.

The typical response when you are reaching system capacity has been to expedite the use of cloud services or provision more on-premises servers. But in the current circumstances, this solution is less than ideal. Why? Because for some companies, the budgets that would have been allocated to this extra provisioning have been terribly squeezed by the COVID-19 pandemic. 94% of Fortune 1000 companies are experiencing supply chain disruptions affecting revenues and budgets. By the time you buy new hardware, it could be many months until it arrives due to disruptions in the supply chain. Once you receive it, do you have someone in your data center to install it? 

For companies looking at ever-increasing cloud and on-premises infrastructure spend to meet the increased application and workload demand there is a better option. Instead of just paying for more infrastructure, they can get more out of their existing systems, whether in the cloud or on-premises.

How? With automated and continuous tuning for their big data analytics stack.

Even the most experienced IT operations teams can’t manually tune every application and workflow. The scale – thousands of applications per day and a growth rate of dozens of nodes per year – is too large for manual efforts. However, machine learning can help with this tuning, and the upside is huge. Automatic capacity optimization typically allows companies to run 30-50% more jobs on their existing Hadoop or Spark clusters, which equates to an overall better customer experience.

Big data performance management can ensure that companies get the most out of their existing big data infrastructure. By monitoring the entire infrastructure in real time and leveraging machine learning and active resource management, the system can automatically identify where more work can be done, and adds workload to servers with available resources. In addition, such a system can enable users to constantly monitor their infrastructure for performance issues, bottlenecks, and other problems that can impede performance. 

This approach enables companies to automatically improve their existing infrastructure performance by as much as 50%. This means companies can gain the same performance as if they’d added 50% more hardware, but without the spend or wasted time.

In the world of big data, capacity requirements continue to grow. However, provisioning more servers is always a costly option. The better route is to do more with what you already have, by leveraging tools that can improve and optimize

 the performance of your existing infrastructure. Pepperdata can automatically tune and optimize cluster resources, recapture wasted capacity, and improve your big data analytics stack ROI – on-premises or in the cloud. This approach will help enterprises weather the Covid-19 storm. It will also give them digital maturity and business resilience for years to come.

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Ash Munshi, CEO of Pepperdata. Before joining Pepperdata, Ash was executive chairman for Marianas Labs, a deep learning startup sold in December 2015. Prior to that, he was CEO for Graphite Systems, a big data storage startup that was sold to EMC DSSD in August 2015. Ash also served as CTO of Yahoo, as a CEO of both public and private companies, and is on the board of several technology startups. Ash attended Harvard University, Brown University, and Stanford University.

The supply chain has evolved significantly over the past few years. However, the current developments caused by the coronavirus pandemic have made the changes even faster than it had been anticipated. The COVID-19 pandemic has altered many things starting from product suppliers, strategies all the way to supply routes. According to a study by Ocean Insights, coronavirus pandemic could result in greater collaboration and technological innovations across this industry than ever before. According to the study, 42% of the shipping and freight professionals are likely to change their supply chain strategies. Of these professionals, 67% see investment in technology as an area that will substantially alter their operations after the pandemic.

There is a likelihood of increased investment in technology as new collaborative solutions make way into the supply chain. Shipping and supply chains will be much more different from how they were a few decades ago. With collaboration and sharing of information, it will be easy to understand the best practices in the industry. This makes it easy to fight the challenges that come with the virus. If there is the right time that collaboration is required, it is now more than ever.

With the shutdowns that have been imposed on different countries, more online and remote technology is necessary to make the supply chain flexible. Technology will allow supply chain companies based on real-time events. With collaboration software, workforce management systems can be used to manage employees remotely and enhance time usage. Enhanced IT capabilities and automation will not only reduce the cost of doing business but will, in the process, increase efficiency and transparency.

For large complex businesses, changing circumstances is what necessitates change. What we are seeing in the supply chain in recent days is uncertainty and volatility, that is damaging and often leads to losses. With the changing political, social, environmental, and market impacts that have had more effects on the supply chain, customers must take over supply chains and react appropriately in the current changing times. Many existing applications that are used by customers rely mostly on legacy systems and old enterprise resource planning. However, modern applications and business activities require data, as this is critical in modern business operations. As such, there is a disconnection between the required systems and the legacy systems, most of that are currently in use, that must be addressed to eliminate siloes. With the right revolution, there is an excellent opportunity to derive value if data and intelligence can be applied to control the supply chain.

The advances in artificial intelligence, machine, and internet of things have led to the rise of machine learning algorithms and visibility, that will be highly embraced going forward. This is due to the coronavirus pandemic, that has opened the eyes of many supply chain professionals enabling them to see the inefficiencies of the existing supply chain processes. With access to vast volumes of data and increased computing power that run algorithms, new levels of visibility, command, and control are necessary.

Although the pandemic might have shut doors in different areas of the supply chain, it has opened up new opportunities, some of that will change the landscape for the better in the coming days. Some of the future developments that we are likely to see more after the coronavirus involve working from home, use of internet of things technology to monitor the movement of products in the supply chain. Also, artificial intelligence and machine learning will be an area of competition as companies look for ways to get a new competitive advantage. All of this were not so much in use before the virus struck.

No matter the industry or company that you work in, be it an expanding corporation or a small enterprise, the fortunes and success in operations are linked in one way or another to the performance of the supply chain. Therefore, if you want success in your business, you have to ensure the supply chain works effectively. With COVID-19 now ravaging many industries and dealing the biggest ever blow to movement of goods and services, the supply chain requires attention now more than ever.

Instead of severing relationships further down the supply chains, manufacturers and players in other industries should look for ways and methods of supporting supply chain companies to enable them to recover from the adverse impacts of the pandemic. Doing this will give them an edge as the coronavirus subside. As most companies prepare to restart their operations, those with access to the right suppliers of raw materials will be in a better position to come out stronger. However, smaller suppliers may not be able to do it alone without the right kind of support. While some of these companies have taken measures, including reducing the number of employees and salaries, the damage that has been caused is extensive and can be hard to emerge from. The pandemic has brought smaller suppliers to near insolvency as some are now finding it hard to pay their crucial staff and fixed charges that keep their premises running. Their attempts to seek grants have been futile, therefore threatening livelihoods of those who depend on their operations.

Disruptions

Shutdowns and subsequent suspension of operations have been costly as fixed costs associated with the facilities keep increasing without operations to sustain costs. According to Volkswagen, the factories that were closed across Europe recently were costing the company more than $2bn per week in fixed costs. This shows the extent of damage that the pandemic and the resultant impact on the supply chain has caused not only in car manufacturing businesses but in many other industries as well. This calls for effort from financial institutions, governments, and corporates to come up together with a package and plan to rescue the companies before they are grounded.

While support from others is crucial, planning is the most significant part that needs to be done as part of preparations for the worst that is yet to come. Manufacturers and suppliers should have a scenario planning that defines how operations can run in a required timeframe. Manufacturers, on the other hand, should consider dual-sourcing temporarily to minimize disruption. Doing so will fill the gap that cannot be filled by suppliers, most of that are now facing challenges. The most important thing, however, is for manufacturers to support the existing suppliers first because doing so will be less costly and has lower risk. This can involve working with them to meet the new levels of demand. They can also review work in progress and make forecasts of what lies ahead.

For any organization, be it in service or manufacturing industry, they must stay close to their suppliers so that they can identify the issues and how they can help where necessary. In instances where a supplier is near insolvency, they can identify it and consider finding a new supplier to fill the void. After the coronavirus pandemic, the road towards recovery will be long and tough. However, by working as a team and ensuring that supply chain visibility is achieved, there is a possibility of coming back bigger and stronger than before and with the right size to meet the increasing demands. There is a high possibility of getting more market share during the recovery phase.

Companies around the world are now bracing themselves for massive disruptions expected from the effects of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. This is according to a recent study carried out by CNBC Global CFO Council. The report states that things will not return to normal at least for three to six months. The study found that the pandemic has had a far-reaching effect on the supply chain leading to adverse impacts on overall business operations. Other areas that have been extremely affected apart from the supply chain are IT resources, strategic planning, and human resources, most of whom have lost a lot to the disease.

Although the full extent to that the virus has affected different businesses is yet to be known, 40% of businesses state that the supply chain can take between three and six months to get business back to normal. 25% of the companies, according to the CNBC survey, say that it could take six months. Some organizations have not fully experienced significant disruptions yet. Owing to this challenge, companies expect to spend more on critical areas of technology. In preparation for disruptions, most companies are now expected to invest more in employee communication tools and collaboration technology. Similarly, mobile devices and their respective services are also expected to gain during this crisis. Bandwidth, network capacity, and information security that is necessary due to the increasing need for remote work are expected to receive a lot of investment.

Extended delays

Companies say they have already delayed or completely halted their strategic plans due to COVID-19. The areas that have been halted include the hiring of staff, rollout of new products and services, investment in new IT hardware and software, and investment in new IT infrastructure. Those that have IT resources already in place are not having it any better. According to a similar study by S&P Global Market Intelligence, companies’ internal IT resources are already experiencing more strain than before, and this could be worse in the coming days. COVID-19 is likely to have a permanent impact on how work is done on different fronts as work-from-home policies take center stage. While some companies might reverse this after things come back to normal, most of the remote work policies will remain in place permanently.

As it emerges, the economy is driven by the happenings in public health. This means that as long as the health challenge that is currently being experienced remains, the supply chain and other critical drivers of the economy will remain affected. As the virus continues ravaging the economy, companies want supply chain and the economy in general to return to normal. This is what has informed the decision of many corporations to join the fight again the novel coronavirus. Companies such as General Motors and Tesla, among others, are now helping the government in the production of medical supplies such as ventilators that have run out in hospitals. On the other hand, Apple and Facebook are donating face masks in large quantities to help curb the spread of the virus.

With China now slowly coming back to normal, there seems to be some hope despite the damaging impact that the virus is having on other countries. However, the damage has already been done on many fronts and companies.  This may take time since many people are still skeptical about the eradication of the virus in the territory of China. The question is, how long will it take to normalize things? Only time will tell when operations will return like they were before the outbreak. The truth is, the confusion around the current order of events is causing many inconveniences, and many businesses will suffer because of this.

You may be waiting a little longer for your Amazon packages if you live in the Southern California area. Early Friday morning an Amazon distribution center caught fire and ripped through the warehouse causing massive devastation to the building.

The three-alarm fire was called in at around 5:30am on June 5^th in Redlands, California - located about 60 miles from Los Angeles.  Six fire departments in the area were unable to control the blaze which looked like a scene out of a doomsday movie. Thankfully, there were no casualties and as of now no injuries reported. Spokesperson for Amazon, Lisa Levandowski stated, “We are glad everyone is safe, and thankful for the efforts of the local firefighters and first responders.”

The warehouse, owned by Amazon but operated by Kuehne and Nagel, a global transport and logistics company was fairly new. According to Redlands Fire Chief Jim Topoleski, the building had the latest fire protection. The distribution center housed many large items such as mattresses – but Amazon assured the public that the fire would have limited impact on customers as they have many other fulfillment centers around the country.

As for what caused the fire, Topoleski and his department have opened an investigation. He suggested to Fox News, “Something overwhelmed the sprinkler system immediately to allow the fire to rapidly grow.”

In other Amazon news, Amazon recently filed a patent for a blockchain system that tracks items as they move on the supply chain. According to the patent that was submitted on May 26th, the global e-commerce company described it as a ‘distributed ledger certification’ system. It was developed to advance “trust through an enterprise services platform that allows parties to map their global supply chains.”

This patent would help solve Amazon’s issue with counterfeit businesses that has troubled the site for the past few years. In the past, Amazon has been accused of not vetting their third-party vendors and have been plagued by many pejorative investigational articles. In August of 2019, The Wall Street Journal proclaimed that Amazon had “thousands of banned, unsafe or mislabeled products.” The following October, CNBC came out with their own scathing report that Amazon regularly sold expired goods such as baby formula to customers. When brought to their attention Amazon proclaimed that these cases of expired foods were isolated incidents.

These incidents of misleading, counterfeit, and expired goods have caused many reputable companies to yank their products from the site. Among them was Nike who severed their two-year partnership agreement to focus more on their direct-to-consumer business.

Amazon hopes that with this patented block chain it will increase visibility for the user – winning back companies like Nike or Birkenstock that previously cut ties with them.

Amazon is more than just a global e-commerce company as they set their sites on other industries such as the supply chain. While Amazon has come under fire lately for delivering counterfeit and expired products – they hope that their recent patent will not only improve relationships with customers but also gain the trust of businesses who may be hesitant to work with them.

Driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, new manufacturers, shippers and purchasers are emerging daily in markets worldwide to meet the urgent demand for personal protection equipment (PPE). The ability to find and securely engage with these organizations quickly is critical to overcoming the global PPE shortage.

Responding to the need for fast, trusted collaboration among these new participants, Neurored, a global supply chain management (SCM) and transportation management (TMS) solutions provider native to the Salesforce CRM platform, today announced a new digital supply chain network developed to speed the sourcing, production and shipping of critical supplies.  The Critical Supply Chain Network, Powered by Neurored, is a new feature of the company’s CORE digital supply chain software, connecting manufacturers, sourcing agents and freight forwarders to more quickly supply PPE to healthcare facilities, non-profits, NGOs, government agencies and businesses. 

Access to the Critical Supply Chain Network is available to qualified new PPE buyers, suppliers and transportation companies through free community user licenses issued by current Neurored SCM and TMS solutions users. Eligible transportation and sourcing specialist companies can now sign up for one free Transportation Network Community License plus thirty days of Premier Onboarding Support. Buyers can receive one or more free licenses in the trusted Critical Supply Chain Network Communities. 

“We’re witnessing fundamental demand shifts in many areas including food chains, which will be long-term, if not permanent,” stated Joe Hudicka, Managing Director, Neurored. “Connected, resilient and efficient digital supply chains will be crucial to successfully battling COVID-19 and other future challenges.”

Kaelis Group and DG International use Neurored’s digital supply chain and transportation solutions to locate, produce and ship a wide variety of products. Each company has also established a Critical Supply Chain Network built on Neurored to source and ship millions of units of PPE to their respective customers which include businesses and healthcare organizations in the U.S., UK, Spain and Mexico. 

Ryan Lucas, CEO of DG International, a UK-based global freight forwarder said, “Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, we were working with Neurored on a digital transformation of our business, which manages millions of shipments a year globally. Our new digital platform Horizon, which went fully live in May, has provided us with the speed, efficiencies and real-time access to data needed to succeed during this pandemic. We were able to ship over 9 million units of PPE for one of our customers to supply the NHS and frontline workers.  Since March, we have moved roughly over 200 tons of PPE across 52 chartered, commercial and cargo planes.”

In operation for 23 years, Kaelis Group, the world's leading independent provider of onboard products, services and solutions, serves 1.5 billion passengers annually from more than 100 airlines and railway companies in more than 55 countries. 

“We’re proud to participate in the global efforts to supply critical PPE to essential workers worldwide with our partners. The connectivity we have through the Neurored software and the Salesforce platform has been key to the speed at which we’ve been able to work,” said Federico Heitz, CEO, Kaelis Group. “With Neurored, we were able to re-tool our operations to source PPE very quickly. With the new Critical Supply Chain Network feature, we are now able to offer our customers a secure and encrypted online PPE platform, built on Neurored, to purchase and ship PPE. Corporations, NGOs, healthcare and government institutions can now place, pay and track their orders online with us directly to facilitate PPE delivery.”

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For more information about the Critical Supply Chain Network, Powered by Neurored, please visit https://covid-19.neurored.com.

More information about Neurored can be found at https://www.neurored.com/,  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

For weeks grocery store chains have been selling out of staple food items that Americans have come to expect at their local supermarket. From bread to eggs and milk – shoppers have had to go without as Covid-19 continues to spread throughout the country. With so many items out of stock many people have started to wonder – is our food supply at risk?

As cases of Covid-19 started to mount  around the country - non-essential businesses began to close prompting various “shelter-in-place” and “stay-at-home” orders from state governments discouraging and even outright prohibiting people from leaving their house with the exceptions of emergencies, food shopping, and daily walks. The panic of the pandemic that to date has infected 336,673 and claimed nearly 1,000 lives led concerned citizens to stock up on food supplies temporarily emptying shelves.

The good news is that the United States’ food supply is not immediately at risk. Grocery stores have begun to recover and shelves stocked. But economists, farmers, and agriculturists alike are not so confident about the long-term impact if Covid-19 doesn’t slow down.

Countries have already begun to hoard food on a global scale as the pandemic strikes fear across the globe. “We risk a looming food crisis unless measures are taken fast to protect the most vulnerable, keep global food supply chains alive and mitigate the pandemic’s impacts across the food system,” the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations proclaimed in a blog post.

According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition the food supply chain could lose up to $1.32 billion dollars between March and May alone. In a recent blog post they warned, “Without immediate mitigation, we may lose many small, socially disadvantaged, and beginning farms and the important markets they serve.”

The longer the virus circulates the more farms will be affected. While rural areas like farmlands are just now beginning to feel the wrath of the virus – farmers have already begun to feel the impact. Dairy farmers have had to dump thousands of gallons of milk due supply chain disruptions while demand for cheese and other dairy products have decreased due to restaurants and school closures. In Vermont, dairy farmers are expected to see “catastrophic losses” according to secretary of the Agency of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts.

Agriculture farms are also struggling to keep up with demand of fresh produce as the virus threatens not only production but a shortage of workers as many farms rely on Mexican laborers who hold a H-2A visa. But with many governments shutting down in both Mexico and the United States both farmers and workers are having a hard time obtaining the visas. Without enough workers – produce will go to waste.

While deemed essential – field workers are at risk for getting Covid-19 and spreading it to their co-workers as many work side-by-side. While many farmers pledged that they will allow ample time to hand-wash and advocate for social distancing – advocates for migrate workers are afraid that farmers aren’t doing enough to raise awareness of Covid-19 and mitigate the risk. “…most of the companies are not taking the necessary precautions, such as informing the workers about what COVID-19 is and the basic kind of protocols they should be following to take care of their health," explained the executive director of the Mixteco/Indígena Community Organizing Project, Arcenio Lopez.

For now, the United States’ food supply chain is chugging away with limited delays. While imposing no immediate risk to the food supply – it’s unclear how Covid-19 will affect the future of the food industry in months to come.

For the first time in 82 years the hour of services (HOS) laws for truck drivers have been relaxed to help get needed supplies to struggling businesses and hospitals across the  United States. As the novel coronavirus or COVID-19 has turned into a pandemic and rumors of a lock down similar to that of Italy circulating – people are scrambling to get necessities at their local store whether that’s cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer, or toilet paper.

As stores run out of goods – it’s up to the truck drivers across the country to deliver products to ensure businesses run smoothly. According to the American Trucking Association – truck drivers are responsible for moving 71% of all freight tonnage in the United States enabling stores to restock their shelves and ensure hospitals can get the medical supplies they need to treat those effected by the pandemic.

The HOS laws were put into place in 1938 – limiting the amount of hours a truck driver can work. Those laws have been relaxed as of Friday March 13, 2020 for those drivers that are moving medical supplies, masks, and hand sanitizer to stores and hospitals.

In an official statement by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the Acting Administrator Jim Mullen stated,  “Because of the decisive leadership of President Trump and Secretary Chao, this declaration will help America’s commercial drivers get these critical goods to impacted areas faster and more efficiently. FMCSA is continuing to closely monitor the coronavirus outbreak and stands ready to use its authority to protect the health and safety of the American people.”

According to the press release, critical goods include medical supplies and equipment including masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and soap; food for emergency restocking of stores; and equipment, supplies and persons necessary for establishment and management of temporary housing and quarantine facilities related to COVID-19. The guidelines also include moving first responders and those who must be moved due to quarantine, medical or isolation purposes.

While the laws have been relaxed as of Friday, truck drivers must receive a minimum of 8-10 hours off duty once the transport has been completed. The report states that the reduced HOS laws are in effect until after the National Emergency has ended or on April 12, 2020 – which ever comes first.

In a statement to Business Insider, Sean McNally, the spokesperson for the America Trucking Association explained, "Waivers of this type are a common response by FMCSA to natural disasters and crises because trucks delivering food, fuel and medicine are a critical part of the response.” McNally went on to say, "This waiver will help keep loads of medicine, supplies and food moving as the country manages this current pandemic."

As the country scrambles to contain the virus from spreading further – state and federal government have restricted movement in the country closing restaurants, bars, and schools to try to “flatten the curve” or slow the virus enough so the healthcare system is not completely overwhelmed where sick patients are denied live saving care due to hospitals being at capacity.

To make sure healthcare system do go without the needed medical supplies to protect themselves and patients from infection – truck drivers are racing against the clock to delivers these products. Relaxing the HOS laws are one of the ways that truck drivers are helping combat the pandemic and doing their part to keep the “curve” as flat as possible.

Transacting business in the supply chain generally means communicating orders via EDI formatted files or some other equally rigid set of rules. The reasons are easy to understand; order times are critical and specifications for orders are complex so their formats need to adhere to formats that can be instantly read by computerized systems.

EDI requirements may be rigid but they change frequently so there’s some reason to believe that there is in fact, flexibility within the order process. But getting the details wrong causes errors and costs money. How will this tight connection fare in the age of what’s called ‘Industry 4.0’ as new technologies are brought into the mix? Is it possible that the long-standing EDI format will be replaced by directly connected machines (IoT) that avoid the details of creating and processing orders? Or will the deeply embedded format keep business at a slower pace than might be possible if things changed?

Industry 4.0

Internet of Things (IoT) is impacting manufacturing, shipping, warehousing, delivery, and even customer support by adding smart devices to things that have traditionally been, well… dumb. Dumb in the sense that they don’t communicate or have any way to sense their surroundings. That’s changing rapidly as we approach the widely touted 50 billion IoT devices expected to populate the earth by 2020. Whether any particular company wants to move toward these automated pipelines is as moot as those who declared they were not abiding by Walmart’s demand to implement EDI years ago.

Manufacturing facilities around the globe are adding smarts to their machinery or replacing old machines with newer and smarter ones that can go beyond the basics of their intended functions. They are attached wirelessly directly to their company’s management and ERP systems and communicate their current status. They take instructions about manufacturing conditions to adjust their speed and can even sense variations in the materials they work with and adjust their actions to create products that meet required specifications.

The data passed between those machines and the systems that control them amount to magnitudes of data that never existed meaning that traditional manufacturing facilities that operated manually and on a completely analog basis are becoming digital factories. The data itself presents both issues and opportunities for every point along the supply chain because it’s now possible for the end customer to be aware of the status of the product they expect to purchase, and for the manufacturing machine to know how many units it needs to build to meet demand.

Flexibility stretched

Every participant in the supply chain is being armed with more data than they have ever encountered. Their first challenge is to collect and store it; in itself a mundane IT task of managing storage and connectivity. But what is done with that accumulated data as it passes along the chain is what will define the next generation manufacturer, transport company, retailer, and even the end customer. Those that devote the time and resources to understanding, then imagining how Supply Chain 4.0 will look.

It’s been a while since Walmart first insisted that its suppliers moved to its digital order process. Back then the prospect of using EDI rather than fax or phone to place orders seemed like a technological hurdle. And in fact it was a significant hurdle that plenty of suppliers bucked against. But today Walmart’s tactics have become accepted and electronic order processing is no longer the pariah it once was. Now the retailer is making another mandate to its suppliers. But this time it’s not about what but where.

Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) has been the go-to supplier of cloud based software deployments and an overwhelming number of companies have put their online software there. It’s easy, reliable, and competitively priced. But now that Amazon is competing directly with Walmart for retail business Walmart doesn’t want the digital guts of its business hosted on a competitor’s site. That’s understandable, and in fact in 2014 the company moved its entire ecommerce presence to the cloud - and not Amazon’s cloud.

Our colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explains the move and strategy here. 

So where’s the mandate?

It isn’t enough that Walmart hosts its own data away from AWS. The retailer doesn’t want its suppliers hosting its data and the transactions they process on its competitor’s cloud either. The most recent mandate instructs suppliers to move their systems off AWS. They’re apparently fine with alternate cloud vendors like Microsoft Azure who are not direct competitors, but Amazon is a no-no. 

To be clear, the mandate (for now) is directed at tech providers. So product suppliers who host their own systems on AWS may not be affected. But the move may turn out to indirectly impact product suppliers if their EDI service providers host their applications and data on AWS.

The ripple effect

Amazon has done a great job of delivering cloud computing facilities that make it easy for companies to deploy their software services. In fact it may be the default choice for smaller EDI service providers because they can concentrate on developing their systems and delivering high quality customer support while leaving the heavy lifting of server farms and data centers to Amazon.

If your EDI provider has received a mandate letter from Walmart to shift its cloud hosting services you can bet they are scrambling to meet whatever deadlines are being required. Their revenue is reliant on delivering their customers’ transactions (your transactions) to and from Walmart and every other trading partner you deal with. And because of the depth and breadth of Walmart’s vendor base nearly every EDI service provider has connections to Walmart.

Be proactive

Don’t know if you will be affected? Ask your EDI service provider where their applications are hosted and how they are responding to Walmart’s mandate. Either your provider will need to change or you will need to change your provider if you want to keep your business relationship with Walmart.

 

Moving EDI data around the globe is old hat to most of the folks reading this ec-bp newsletter. Managing the connections and translations can get complex and picky when it comes to the details of the files and the changes that need to be incorporated into translators to make processes flow properly. For most EDI practitioners, their roles are fairly well defined and fit well with established concepts. But as mobile devices take over I think the line between what is EDI and what is associated with end user interaction is changing.

 

EDI is a significant source of big data. Of course that's no shock to anyone dealing with data storage or a VAN bill, but when you consider the volume of transactions and the number or companies involved, it would seem that there is a wealth of data in those transactions. The data now covers (depending on the trading partners) every aspect of the order process, from initial P.O. to final payment, with plenty of status updates along the way. So, what can be learned from all the data? It turns out that when looked at as an aggregate and put through the right analytical processes, there's plenty to be learned - and predicted.

Being able to use the data created by both the supplier and customer to understand the sales cycle can be a great advantage to both companies who are looking to make the most of their resources in an increasingly competitive environment. The addition of CPFR (Cooperative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment) can go a long way to maximizing margins and minimizing mistakes.