Page 18 - Linkline Summer 2016

Engineering 21st Century Global Logistics and Supply Chains
Professor Edward Sweeney FCILT
Introduction
Logistics and supply chain professionals are faced with myriad challenges in the globally interconnected, technologically advanced and environmentally aware 21st century. This articles sets out some of the key busi- ness challenges being faced across various sectors and argues that supply chain management (SCM) thinking remains an important paradigm in addressing these and other related challenges. However, there is signi cant evidence of a divergence between theory and practice in this area; a number of sub-optimal approaches are highlighted, the adoption of which by rms in the past has contributed to this divergence. The article goes on to argue that the adoption of engineering principles of- fers the potential to address this conundrum by putting innovation at the core of contemporary logistics and SCM. Two examples of this – systems thinking in sup- ply chain design and re-engineering, and three-dimen- sional concurrent engineering (3DCE) – are introduced
nance. The natural environment is under pressure as a result of climate change, population growth and oth- er factors. It is now well understood the logistics and supply chain activities contribute greatly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and that “business as usual” is sim- ply no longer an option if a sustainable future is to be achieved.
16 THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF LOGISTICS & TRANSPORT
and their potential explored. The article concludes by proposing some potential- ly fruitful avenues for future innovation.
It is impossible to articulate an exhaus- tive list of the business challenges being faced by rms in 2016. They vary consid- erably between different sectors given the different pressures being faced but there are some which appear to exist across the majority of industries.
Competition is more intense than ever. Markets have become more sophisticat- ed and customers more discerning. The international economic and business en- vironment has become more volatile, a fact that is plain to see in an Irish context with the Celtic Tiger followed by one of the deepest recessions ever witnessed in a developed economy and subse- quently by a modest improvement in growth in recent years. This volatility at an international levels matters because business has become increasingly inter- national – often global – in complexion in recent years as a result of structural change in the economic environment. In this context, it is often impossible to de ne the “nationality” of products (and services) as they have become genuine- ly international in terms of their prove-
Background – business challenges
As rms have focussed strategically on the identi ca- tion and development of core competencies, those ac- tivities deemed to be “non-core” have increasingly been outsourced. This process of vertical disintegration has resulted in supply chain architectures becoming more virtual. The “big data” challenge has been well docu- mented in recent years. Data is being collected at all stages in supply chains and it has become widely recog- nised that transforming these data into usable and use- ful information is a critical success factor. In this context, technology – particularly information and communica- tion technology (ICT) – has a potentially pivotal role to
EDWARD SWEENEY