How Big Data Will Affect Your Supply Chain
Big data is a hot topic, but one of its most promising applications is in supply chain management. Leveraging big data to inform and automate your supply chain, especially for Department of Defense suppliers, is the next step to increasing your efficiency and reducing your long-term spend. Here are 7 ways that big data will affect your supply chain.
Full Automation
What if you had insight into your entire supply chain? And what if your supply chain ran itself? That’s the kind of future we’re talking about by using the Internet of Things through RFID technology to bring big data to your supply chain. Increasing automation means time savings, compliance assurance to meet DoD standards, and a supply chain that’s flexible enough to adjust to market changes.
Last-Mile Delivery
Traditionally the last mile of delivery has been a patchwork of outside carriers, transportation, and deliveries. Aligning big data with your supply means that you know where your products are at all times, ultimately offering insight into your entire supply chain.
Responsive Operations
By tapping into your data, you have the ability to be more responsive to changes in DoD requirements and in your environment. Project scope changed? Big weather front coming in? With full visibility and a connected supply chain, you can shift your operations easily. You’ll spend less time potentially fixing issues and more time optimizing your supply chain and ultimately getting paid.
Route Optimization
Even in our digital world, transportation is still time-consuming and expensive. Delivering products to different locations isn’t easy, and the expectations for smart supply chains are increasing. Connecting the Internet of Things to your supply chain means that you can optimize how you transport your products and get the right products to the right locations as efficiently as possible.
Address Verification
While our goods are connected and our data is abundant, delivery can still present a challenge. We’re at the mercy of systems that require physical addresses to deliver our goods and services. Leveraging big data and RFID to verify these addresses can reduce points of human error and introduce additional efficiency.
Risk Evaluation & Resilience Planning
Increased visibility and flexibility throughout your supply chain means that your operations are more structurally sound. Your risk is lowered, your ability to meet DoD compliance standards is increased, and you can plan for long-term complications that might affect your supply chain.
Contextual Intelligence
Amassing large amounts of data isn’t enough anymore. Having a contextual understanding of that real-time data and tying it into your business operations is what drives the most value for DoD suppliers. By connecting big data to your supply chain, you have the opportunity to gain a complete, holistic vision of your business and introduce additional efficiency into your supply chain.
In order to take advantage of these benefits of big data, you must have the ability to properly identify your supply chain structure as well as your sources of data. A smart implementation takes into account your entire operations process as well as your assets and internal stakeholders. While these are just a few ways that big data will affect your supply chain, Odyssey can help you implement these concepts so you can take advantage of the benefits of using big data to inform your supply chain logistics. Contact us today to learn how our cloud-based software can help prepare you for the next evolution of supply chain operations.