A retrospective of the decade through ILOS Panoramas

On Tuesday, 31/12, we reached the end of the year 2019 and also the second decade of the century. The event motivated several internet retrospectives, involving various subjects, such as the main films, soccer players and the most played songs. Attentive to this trend, I remembered that the ILOS has a vast collection of information and research on various logistical topics, with our reports from the Panorama collection, produced over several years, since 2003. older ones from the past decade (with a different logo, and using that recycled paper that was ubiquitous at the time…) and compare some of the differences in information with the most recent ILOS publications.

Figures 1: ILOS panoramas. A lot of information and insights produced in the more than 40 reports published in the last decade. Source: ILOS

Always one of the most hyped subjects, I decided to look first at the overview of Logistics Costs in Brazil, released in 2010. It was a little disappointing. The material at the time pointed out that in 2008, logistics costs in the country corresponded to around 11,6% of GDP. In the last research presented in the Supply Chain Forum this value was 11,7% in 2018. Would it be possible to attribute this slight increase to the increasing complexities that have emerged 10 years ago? Perhaps, but the same data indicate that in the USA the proportion fell from 8,7% to 8,0% in the same period. We stayed further back. Well, when we looked at the main conclusions of the 2010 document, we realized that they could be easily adapted for the current period: we need a more balanced transport matrix (we changed almost nothing, as shown by publications by 2011 e 2019), we need more investments in infrastructure, etc. New challenges arise, but we do not get rid of past burdens.

Another interesting material to revisit was that of Demand Planning and S&OP in Companies in Brazil, also from 2010. Analyzing it and making comparisons with new studies, it is possible to see some advances, some more significant, and others more timid. At the beginning of the decade, only a fifth (21% to be exact) of respondents claimed to use advanced statistical methods in sales forecasting, a figure that almost doubled in the Logistic Benchmarking among Large Industries in Brazil, published in 2018 (41%). The percentage of Brazilian companies interviewed that carried out structured S&OP processes in 2010 was 62%. In the 2018 material, this number increased to 68%, surprisingly far behind the US percentage of 2010 (88%).

Evidently, several innovations and new trends have also emerged in the logistics world since the beginning of the last decade. We do not see in the 2010 report questions or information about drones, Big Data ou IoT, issues that we have addressed several times in other publications, such as the already mentioned Panorama Benchmarking of 2018. In it, we realize that these innovations, as expected, have not yet been fully disseminated in companies, but there are very positive signs, such as the data which shows that in more than half of the interviewees (53%), the logistics and inventory processes are integrated with Omnichannel.

Now, we begin a new decade, a new opportunity, certainly filled with resolutions about progress and development in our lives and our companies. We will proudly continue to publish new studies and reports, taking advantage of the turn of the year to launch a new format, whose theme will be the Challenges and Solutions of the Urban Last Mile.

We will be even happier if the materials show ever better numbers, which show advances in the country's logistics scenario, and all of us professionals in this area have our role in this journey. We leave our sincere wishes for the next 10 years to be of much success and growth.