Warehouse and transportation management must be reinvented

The transformation of the process in which raw materials, supplies, spare parts and products are received, classified and sent has been accelerated since the pandemic. Supply chains have faced considerable changes that have altered perspectives and priorities. While Covid-19 is not the only reason, it is an important factor. The pandemic is not over yet either, which brings more uncertainty.
To this saturation, let us also add the difficulties caused by the war in Eastern Europe: increase in freight prices, substitution of raw materials, etc. Epidemics and wars are the historical factors of the transformation of societies and, of course, of the way of producing and doing business.

Resilience in the supply chain.

It has been and is a difficult period for supply chain management. The reasons are varied and include material and labor shortages, higher costs, increased customer expectations and delivery challenges. These aspects viewed separately probably will not last forever, but the broader experience of disruption has highlighted the need for a resilient supply chain, demonstrating its ability to overcome.
The supply chain thus requires a broad strategy, in which agility is an essential component to be able to change when adversity occurs. It is even possible that it can be anticipated before the disruption has an impact.
Logistics requires a comprehensive vision of flows and movements, and the same intelligence that is being applied to optimize production.

Technology in the supply chain.

While there are uncertainties, there are also opportunities in the management of transportation and storage of materials. Those opportunities are driven by technologies as well as changes in consumer behavior.
Company systems require increasingly specialized tools for storage and transportation management (WMS and TMS), incorporating artificial intelligence concepts to learn from recorded experiences and propose optimal solutions.
On the other hand, robotics and automation are not new to logistics.
However, the recent exponential acceleration in technological innovation and its low investment costs never cease to surprise us.
To illustrate with some examples, we can name: autonomous vehicles transporting goods, automatic registration of movements in the systems through RFID tags (radio frequency) in the materials, video analytics evaluating the length of truck queues to expand the service openings for entry or exit of the plant, monitoring of operational variables of the forklifts associated with their driver, and twin models that represent with total precision the logistics processes to allow anticipating their evolution and simulating the best way. to solve future problems.
The ease of obtaining data, storing it and processing it constitutes another point on this list applied to supply chain management.

Logistics requires a comprehensive vision of flows and movements, and the same intelligence that has been applied to optimize production.

Management dashboards integrating information from different sources provide complete support for decision making, allowing us to anticipate problems and solve them by minimizing costs or improving service.
Technology can save costs, but also make work safer and friendlier for workers, customers and the environment.

The impact of logistics on the environment.

Beyond costs and service, a new look is beginning to be important. It is not the same to purchase a product that generates high emissions of pollutants as another that does not.
That is why companies increasingly need to know the level of contamination not only in the production processes, but also in the logistical processes embedded in the movement of their products, such as those embedded in the raw materials and inputs purchased.
This generates a first starting point to make investments that seek to adapt the company's carbon footprint, thus generating an additional competitive advantage in its products.
Storage and supply chain operations are adopting new solutions to make their operations more sustainable and this is where the introduction of vehicles using less polluting fuels (gas, electric, hydrogen) is beginning to constitute a differential.
Companies are increasingly chosen not only for price and service but also for the environmental impact of their production and supply chain.

It's not just about reducing costs.

Today more than ever, the cost of a product is far from the mere cost of its production. We must add the costs of storage and transportation both for the reception of its components and for the transfer of what is produced.
On the other hand, the life cycle of products is reduced by technological innovation and marketing, causing a greater speed of change for consumers. Storage must more closely monitor this cycle, seeking to minimize obsolescence and its associated financial costs, and in transportation, continue applying the rule: “always moving and always full.”
Greater competitiveness, productivity, efficiency and service, while increasing profitability while caring for the environment. It is a period of transformation, and that brings challenges, but also new and exciting opportunities.