Comprising many interdependent players, as well as a multitude of tools dedicated to transport, planning or stocks, the supply chain finds in new technologies a powerful lever for pooling.
Accessibility of data, extensibility of available space, storage and computing power… The promise of cloud computing responds to the all-round transformations of companies, as well as to the new constraints of specific professions, such as those of the supply chain. "As the supply chain is increasingly complex and exposed to various risks, from Covid-19 to the war in Ukraine, it must be agile," summarizes Marc Dauga, member of the Digital and Technologies Lab of the France Supply Chain association.
This complexity is due both to the multitude of tools used – transport management system (TMS), planning (APS), stocks and warehouses (WMS), etc. – and to stakeholders. "From production sites to distributors, there are many stakeholders: it's an interdependent world that cannot operate in silos," says Ivan Rogissart, Zscaler's Southern Europe pre-sales manager, an expert in cloud security. Above all, the pooling of everyone's information is a lever for optimization.
Proliferation of new solutions
"By relying on the mathematical power of artificial intelligence, we can cross-reference data on weather, road traffic, the drop in production or the increase in demand, in order to anticipate their impacts, and adapt the entire chain," explains Ivan Rogissart. For his part, Marc Dauga also evokes the proliferation of new solutions, especially on the side of young shoots. "For each new challenge, a start-up offers a turnkey service, so many solutions that are hosted in the cloud," he says.
In this fragmented ecosystem, the key word is traceability. Hence the relevance of a technology such as blockchain, which "offers the best possible visibility on flows, allowing responsibility to be transferred to the entire chain," says Marc Dauga. Not to mention that, here again, "it is the mass of data that makes the difference in predicting the necessary adjustments, and the blockchain makes it possible to secure the mass, thus guaranteeing end-to-end trust," says Ivan Rogissart.
Finally, at a time of reasoned consumption quest, "where each component of a product must be traceable, from its extraction to its transformation and routing, the blockchain is becoming an essential element of CSR policies", concludes Marc Dauga.
Source: https://www.lesechos.fr/thema/articles/quand-cloud-et-blockchain-optimisent-la-logistique-1414380