Technology is increasingly becoming essential to ensure efficiency and agility throughout the supply chain management process. This trend was accelerated by the shocks caused by the pandemic, which forced a restructuring of service channels, with increased complexity and demand for new logistical services.
We presented it on the last 18/10, during the opening of the 28th International Supply Chain Forum, an unprecedented survey on the use of technology in the Supply Chain in Brazil, bringing the status of the use of some of the main systems and hardware that have been applied to improve the performance of the supply chain, from the point of view of 80 senior executives from the largest companies with operations in the country.
The results show that many systems and equipment are still in an embryonic state of being implemented in Brazil or are focused on specific operations and industries, while others are already widespread. Specialized systems for managing logistics operations, such as the TMS (Transportation Management System) and the WMS (Warehouse Management System), for example, are used by 76% and 87% of the respondents, respectively, indicating that they are already consolidated technologies used by the company. most companies.
Some technologies gained prominence in the executives' responses, such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), which is already part of the routine of almost half (42%) of the companies, and is mainly aimed at tracking products in warehouses. The visibility achieved by RFID also allows companies to use available information about their products and share them with their customers.
The ILOS survey also reveals that there is still a long way to go for the use of advanced technologies, such as Virtual Reality and autonomous vehicles, which have a low adoption rate, being used by 16% and 6% of the responding companies, respectively. The chart below shows current usage and willingness to invest more in a given technology in the coming years.
Figure: Current use of technologies and willingness to invest more in technologies in the coming years. Source: ILOS
Based on these results, we carried out some analyzes of clustering to try to understand the stages of evolution of the different technologies and help companies with a roadmap of digitalization of the Supply Chain, which we will present in an upcoming post. Until then!
Leonardo Julianelli
https://ilos.com.brExecutive Partner of ILOS. Graduated in Production Engineering from EE/UFRJ, Master in Business Administration from COPPEAD/UFRJ with extension at EM Lyon, France, and PhD in Production Engineering from COPPE/UFRJ. He has several articles published in periodicals and specialized magazines, being one of the authors of the book: “Sales Forecast: Organizational Processes & Qualitative and Quantitative Methods”. His research areas are: Demand Planning, Customer Service in the Logistics Process and Operations Planning. He worked for 8 years at CEL-COPPEAD / UFRJ, helping to organize the Logistics Teaching area. In consultancy, he carried out several projects in the logistics area, such as Diagnosis and Master Plan, Sales Forecast, Inventory Management, Demand Planning and Training Plan in companies such as Abbott, Braskem, Nitriflex, Petrobras, Promon IP, Vale, Natura, Jequití, among others. As a professor, he taught classes at companies such as Coca-Cola, Souza Cruz, ThyssenKrupp, Votorantim, Carrefour, Petrobras, Vale, Via Varejo, Furukawa, Monsanto, Natura, Ambev, BR Distribuidora, ABM, International Paper, Pepsico, Boehringer, Metrô Rio , Novelis, Sony, GVT, SBF, Silimed, Bettanin, Caramuru, CSN, Libra, Schlumberger, Schneider, FCA, Boticário, Usiminas, Bayer, ESG, Kimberly Clark and Transpetro, among others.
