How Supply Chain Management will Change by 2040
This year, iPoint is celebrating its 20th anniversary – time to reflect on the origins of our success and at the same time look ahead to the next 20 years. Since 2001, it has been the pioneer spirit which shapes and characterizes our daily work. The impact of our decades of work became evident at iPoint’s annual customer conference fw:transparency in late 2020, when companies like BASF, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ford, Kennametal, Logitech, and Philips demonstrated how they are using iPoint’s software solutions to meet a wide range of compliance, circular economy, and sustainability challenges. To provide our innovative products and services, we not only keep close contact with our customers, but also cooperate with and track the work of international institutions which shape our future through their applied research, such as the University of Graz, the Technical University of Braunschweig, and the Fraunhofer-Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA. Fun fact: my career began in a practical semester at the Fraunhofer IPA, and I founded my first company with an IPA employee. In this post, I will focus on a recent study of the Fraunhofer IPA.
What will our world look like in 20 years – when the Coronavirus pandemic will hopefully be a story from the past? “More autonomous, greener, more complex, faster and more flexible,” according to researchers from the Fraunhofer IPA, who have investigated how Supply Chain Management (SCM) will change by the year 2040 as part of a study conducted with corporate consultancy Ginkgo Management Consulting. The study’s findings point out the importance of digital data and advanced technologies – such as blockchain, IoT or AI – for innovations and increasing sustainability in logistics. I highly recommend this study, especially to decision makers in logistics and supply chain, as it focuses on the central question of how companies in these sectors should position themselves in the future in order to remain competitive. You can download the complete study here.
