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Why Supply Chain Due Diligence Is Becoming a Business Imperative

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Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, International Trade

Why Supply Chain Due Diligence Is Becoming a Business Imperative

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Supply chain due diligence requirements are growing quickly. What’s driving this shift, and why are so many companies struggling to keep up?

Supply chain due diligence is becoming much more data-driven. Regulators increasingly expect companies to provide verifiable information about where products come from, how they’re made, and whether human rights and environmental standards are being met. EUDR, the EU Forced Labour Regulation, PPWR, and the emerging Digital Product Passport framework are all moving toward the same expectation: trusted, structured supply chain data.

Read also: Set Up a Compliance-Ready Export Supply Chain

This summer alone illustrates how quickly expectations are changing. New guidance on the EU Forced Labour Regulation arrived in June, the Digital Product Passport registry launched in July, and PPWR follows in August. Many companies are still trying to meet those expectations with disconnected systems and manual processes, an approach that simply doesn’t scale as regulations become more complex.

We’ve seen the difference firsthand. One brand completed a full due diligence assessment in 31 minutes, while another needed several hours and a team of six. The regulation didn’t change between them, just their data readiness. 

You often describe supply chain due diligence as a “pre-competitive” issue rather than a competitive advantage. What do you mean by that, and why are major retailers beginning to collaborate instead of building their own proprietary systems?

Supply chain due diligence is not something companies should compete on. The goal is to create a common foundation for collecting and assessing supply chain data so everyone is working from the same baseline. The real competitive advantage comes from how companies act on those insights, not from maintaining proprietary questionnaires or duplicative compliance processes.

Historically, each retailer developed its own supplier questionnaires, due diligence workflows, and corrective action requirements. For brands selling to multiple retailers, that often meant providing the same information repeatedly in slightly different formats. Major retailers are increasingly recognizing that standardizing these processes doesn’t diminish their competitive position. Instead, it reduces administrative burden for suppliers, improves data consistency, and gives retailers higher-quality, more comparable information for managing supply chain risk. When data can be shared through a common framework, everyone spends less time on repetitive reporting and more time addressing the issues that actually matter.

Many smaller brands don’t have dedicated compliance teams. How has the current approach to supplier questionnaires, audits, and certifications disproportionately affected SMBs?

Smaller brands feel this most because they don’t have a dedicated compliance function to absorb the work. Large organizations may have specialists managing supplier questionnaires, audits, certifications, and corrective action plans, but many SMBs are trying to meet the same expectations with only a handful of employees.

That’s the gap solutions like One Retail Hub aim to close. Instead of managing a different process for every retailer relationship, a brand completes one shared assessment and reuses its existing documentation wherever it’s needed. It gives smaller brands access to the same standardized process larger organizations use, without requiring them to build an entire compliance function first.

Retailers have historically relied on their own questionnaires and compliance processes. Why is that model becoming increasingly unsustainable for global supply chains?

Every retailer asking suppliers to complete a different questionnaire may have been manageable when due diligence expectations were relatively limited. It becomes much harder when every new regulation requires more evidence, more supplier engagement, and more product-level documentation. Companies end up repeating the same work across multiple systems instead of building on information they’ve already collected.

The challenge is not just the time involved, but the growing cost of compliance. Even large brands are feeling that pressure, while smaller businesses often lack the resources to keep up. The industry needs to make compliance more practical so companies can spend less time managing administrative requirements and more time strengthening their supply chains.

How can the industry reduce the cost of compliance without lowering standards?

The industry can reduce the cost of compliance by reducing duplication, not by lowering standards. Companies shouldn’t have to collect the same evidence five different times simply because five customers ask for it in different ways.

Some manufacturers now spend around 150 hours every month on data collection and reporting, with dedicated staff focused solely on paperwork and traceability. By standardizing how due diligence information is collected and reused, companies can significantly reduce administrative effort while maintaining the same level of transparency and accountability. The goal is not to ask for less information, but to make it much easier to manage and apply across different requirements.

How can better supply chain data help companies do more than just meet compliance requirements?

Once the data exists in one place, verified and structured, compliance becomes the floor, not the ceiling. The same supplier information that proves EUDR or forced labour compliance can also show a brand where its Scope 3 emissions are coming from, which suppliers carry disproportionate risk, and where sourcing decisions can reduce both cost and impact.

We’re seeing brands use that information for real-time visibility rather than year-end reporting. Linking purchase orders to mapped suppliers means a brand knows, the moment an order is placed, exactly which facility will produce it and what that facility’s track record looks like. That’s a sourcing decision made with foresight instead of a compliance report written in hindsight.

The same data also strengthens product claims. If a brand says a garment contains 30 percent recycled material, it should have a verified data trail that supports that claim just as confidently as it would support a regulatory audit.

The long-term goal is for supply chain data to reach the same level of rigor as financial data. Better sourcing decisions, stronger risk management, and more credible product claims are what make it valuable long after the reporting requirement is met.

What needs to happen for compliance to become simpler and less expensive for companies across the supply chain?

The key is moving away from fragmented, retailer-by-retailer compliance and toward shared infrastructure. 

Industry initiatives such as One Retail Hub demonstrate what that can look like by giving brands a standardized way to complete and share HREDD assessments across participating retailers while building on documentation they already have. AI can also help identify, organize, and reuse relevant information, making the process faster and more efficient without changing the underlying requirements.

As more retailers align around common frameworks, compliance becomes much easier to scale, allowing companies to spend more time improving supply chain transparency and strengthening due diligence rather than managing repetitive reporting.

Looking ahead, how do you see supply chain compliance changing over the next few years?

The biggest shift is away from compliance as an annual project. Right now, most teams still treat each regulation as its own sprint: gather evidence, submit it, then move on to the next requirement. Over the next few years, compliance will become much more continuous, with data collected as products move through the supply chain rather than assembled retroactively when a deadline arrives.

The second shift is from fragmented systems toward shared infrastructure. One Retail Hub is an early example of that, with multiple retailers agreeing that a common questionnaire is more effective than maintaining separate versions of the same process. I expect more of the industry to reach the same conclusion, not because collaboration is fashionable, but because the alternative simply doesn’t scale as regulations continue to multiply.

The third shift is that scrutiny will move earlier in the process. The EU Forced Labour Regulation’s latest guidance makes it clear that a company’s existing traceability can influence whether an investigation proceeds before it formally begins. That’s a preview of where the industry is heading more broadly. Companies with structured, retrievable data won’t just report faster. They’ll also be better positioned to demonstrate compliance from the outset.

Taken together, compliance stops being a reactive function and becomes business infrastructure that supports sourcing, risk management, product claims, and broader supply chain decision-making.

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Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, International Trade

You Don’t Have Supply Chain Visibility. You Have Supply Chain Data. Here’s the Difference.

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The Visibility Boom: What Supply Chains Got Right

Over the past decade, the supply chain technology industry sold a compelling promise: give operations leaders real-time views of what’s moving, where it is, and when it will arrive. For the generation of supply chain professionals who’d been raised on spreadsheets, batch reports, and gut instinct, that promise was transformative.

Read also: How 3D Technology Is Revolutionizing Supply Chain Visibility

To its credit, the industry largely delivered:

  • Control towers proliferated. 
  • IoT sensors tracked granular events. 
  • Dashboards replaced binders. 

Executives who once waited until Monday morning for last week’s numbers could now see yesterday’s inventory positions before their first meeting. Visibility became the benchmark for supply chain sophistication. If your systems could answer “where is it?” in real time, you were ahead of the curve.

But something got overlooked in the decade-long race for visibility: the question of what you’re supposed to do with it.

Why Visibility Alone Is Falling Short

Visibility tells you what happened. Execution determines what happens next.

In a well-architected supply chain, those two things are tightly coupled. A disruption surfaces in the data, a decision gets made, and operations responds — faster than the competition, and, importantly, faster than the customer notices. That’s the promise visibility was supposed to enable.

In most supply chains, that coupling doesn’t exist. 

The visibility layer and the execution layer are separate systems, often from separate vendors, running on separate data models. The dashboard shows a problem. A human opens a ticket. Someone logs into a different system to investigate. A decision gets made — maybe the right one, maybe not — and the execution system gets updated manually.

By the time that loop closes, the window for a good outcome has also passed. Prevention becomes restoration; mitigation becomes salvage.

The gap between insight and action isn’t a data problem. It’s an architecture problem. And it’s one that no amount of additional dashboards will solve.

Integrated vs. Unified Commerce: Where the Model Breaks

The retail sector has been living this tension in sharp relief. As omnichannel operations matured, brands built what they believed was a unified commerce infrastructure — e-commerce platforms connected to warehouse management systems, POS syncing with ERPs, order management layers linking everything together. The integrations worked. The data was moving.

But there’s an important distinction between integrated commerce and unified commerce. Integrated commerce connects systems to each other. Unified commerce builds everything on a single shared data layer. The difference sounds subtle until you see what happens under pressure.

Tamer Selim, CTO of Evereve — a women’s fashion retailer operating more than 115 stores across 30-plus states — described the integrated commerce ceiling precisely. Multiple systems were syncing data between them. On paper, the integrations were functioning. In practice, the imperfect data those systems were exchanging was creating cascading failures: returns processed in-store not reconciling online, inventory positions lagging by hours, customer records inconsistent across channels.

The fix wasn’t a better integration layer. It was getting the data right at the source — moving from a model where systems sync imperfect data to a model where a single clean data layer powers every channel simultaneously.

That shift — from connected systems to shared infrastructure — is where integrated commerce ends and unified commerce begins. And it’s the same shift supply chain operations more broadly need to make.

The Execution Gap: How Architecture Choices Shape Performance

Architecture isn’t an IT decision. It’s a business performance decision.

When visibility and execution run on separate systems with different data models, the execution gap is structural. You can improve the quality of your dashboards, the speed of your reporting, the sophistication of your alerting logic — and none of it closes the gap, because the gap isn’t in the visibility layer. It’s in the connection between what you see and what you can do about it.

Brands that have done the foundational architecture work describe the other side as a fundamentally different operating environment. Decisions that once required four-hour investigative cycles happen in seconds. Exceptions that once required manual intervention get resolved automatically. Customer experiences that used to break under volume hold up precisely when it matters most.

AI accelerates this dynamic significantly. 

AI-powered supply chain operations require clean, consistent, real-time data as the foundation. Every AI investment built on top of a fragmented data architecture will underperform — because the models are only as good as the data they run on. The brands investing in AI now without addressing architectural fragmentation are building on an unstable foundation.

It’s always been garbage in, garbage out.

The questions worth asking of your own operation: 

  • how many systems does someone on your team need to consult to answer a customer’s question about their order? 
  • How long does it take for a disruption to surface in your execution systems after it appears in your visibility layer? 
  • How many manual steps sit between the insight and the action?

If the answers involve more than one system, more than a few seconds, or any manual intervention — you have visibility capability. You don’t yet have a supply chain that can action on what it sees.

You don’t need more visibility. You need better execution — built on architecture that closes the gap between the two.  

That’s the real frontier of supply chain performance.

Author Bio

Todd Craig is CMO of Deposco, an AI-native supply chain and warehouse management software company. Deposco powers fulfillment operations for mid-market and enterprise retailers including brands like Evereve and Psycho Bunny.

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How Real-Time Supply Chain Visibility Can Improve Drug Safety in Aged Care

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Did you know that more than 1.2 million people are living in aged care homes? These people depend on aged care centers for proper medication and quality care. However, this is not always the case, especially when aged care homes fail to implement supply chain visibility protocols.

Read also: How 3D Technology Is Revolutionizing Supply Chain Visibility

In healthcare and nursing homes, supply chain visibility refers to tracking, monitoring, and managing the movement of healthcare products. This means that nurses must always know where medications are. In addition, they must be able to monitor the environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity levels, to ensure supplies do not go bad.

Similarly, supply chain visibility also involves accurately tracking inventory levels to ensure that essential drugs do not expire or deplete.

This article will expand on supply chain visibility, its importance, and implementation challenges. 

Understanding Real-Time Supply Chain Visibility

For real time supply chain visibility to be actually effective, aged care facilities must use digital tools to collect and analyse the data in real time. 

In some facilities, real-time supply chain visibility allows tracking medications as they are manufactured, shipped, received, stored, and used. Using digital tools, staff can confirm that the correct supply has been ordered, registered, and used. 

According to the American Public University, supply chain visibility is essential because it guarantees better patient outcomes and reduces medication errors.  

Contrary to popular belief, implementing supply chain visibility protocols is not optional. Regulatory bodies such as the Food and Drug Administration have passed legislation requiring medical facilities to ensure traceability in their supplies.

An example of such legislation is the Drug Supply Security Act (DSCSA). The act requires medical facilities, including nursing homes, to implement full traceability of prescription drugs. Failure to comply with this law can result in license suspension, criminal charges, and loss of business reputation.

Key Benefits of Real-Time Visibility for Drug Safety

One main benefit of real-time visibility for drug safety is that care homes can reduce medication errors through timely access. For elderly residents, timely access to medication is not merely a matter of convenience, but one of safety.

In addition, older adults are often prescribed several drugs to deal with a wide range of diseases such as dementia, heart disease, and diabetes. 

According to research done by the HHS Office of Inspector General, 22% of patients in aged homes experienced adverse events due to substandard treatment and delay of necessary care. This resulted in the residents returning to the hospital, losing over 200 million dollars.

Other benefits of real-time visibility for drug safety are:

It Improves Storage Conditions for Medicines

Real-time visibility helps improve the storage conditions for sensitive medications such as vaccines and certain antibiotics. These medications require specific temperatures and humidity, or they can become unsafe or lose effectiveness.

Unsafe medicine can compromise the safety of the patient, resulting in death. Real-time supply chain systems can detect temperature and humidity abnormalities and inform the staff before they affect the drugs.

Enhances Regulatory Compliance

By implementing real-time visibility, aged care facilities ensure they comply with various regulatory requirements on handling medical supplies.Not following these rules can lead to fines or legal action. 

An example of regulatory requirements that apply includes regulation 42 CFR § 483.45 enforced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. According to this regulation, aged care facilities must provide pharmaceutical services from qualified staff. The regulation also states that proper procedures must be implemented to acquire, receive, and store drugs.

Boosts Operational Efficiency and Inventory Planning

Real-time visibility helps reduce overstocking, emergency purchases, and waste caused by expired supplies. Staff can access live data on stock levels and usage trends. The live data empowers the aged care facilities to make smarter purchasing decisions, lowering costs and improving efficiency.

The Challenges in Aged Care Drug Supply Chains and How to Overcome Them

One of the main challenges in the aged care drug supply chain is that multiple pharmaceutical and logistical providers use different systems. This makes the data fragmented and challenging to analyse. As a result, most aged care facilities use spreadsheets or paper logs to track supplies. 

This leads to duplicate records and raises the risk of errors. The best way to solve this problem is to use a single integrated platform that collects all the data. The facility can then use the data for real-time tracking and analysis.

Cold Chain Logistics and Temperature Sensitivity

Another challenge affecting aged care facilities is sensitive medication such as insulin and vaccines. These medications must be stored at specific temperatures and humidity. 

If the temperature threshold is breached, the medication effectiveness can be compromised, posing a serious health risk to residents. To solve this problem, aged care facilities should implement real-time monitoring to automatically track and record environmental conditions. These systems can adjust the temperatures and sound alarms if there is a system error.

The Future of Drug Safety in Aged Care

Smarter systems, stronger regulations, and better collaborative care models will shape the future of drug safety in aged care facilities. Also, more predictive management systems will be set up to analyse real-time supply and patient data.

Predictive management systems will help predict a facility’s medical needs and identify at-risk residents before an issue arises.

The future will also see the adoption of integrated digital ecosystems connecting different manufacturers, suppliers, and logistical providers to one platform. This will reduce the decentralisation of data, enabling aged care facilities to make better-informed decisions.

Lastly, there will be stricter regulations for traceability and accountability. Governments will also penalise facilities and owners who fail to adhere to these regulations.   

In conclusion, real-time supply chain visibility is the only way to minimise healthcare errors and ensure regulatory compliance. Supply chain visibility reduces losses and improves the quality of life for residents. 

Author Bio

Lesley Barton is the National Clinical and Training Manager at Bunzl & AMHC, with over 40 years of healthcare experience. A Registered Nurse, Midwife, and Continence Nurse Specialist, she transitioned into healthcare sales and management, leading education in continence, wound care, and medical consumables. 

She serves as a Board Director at the Continence Foundation of Australia and founded the Clinical Care Connections (CCC) program, playing a key role in developing Atlas McNeil Healthcare’s education and training initiatives to support best practices in clinical care.

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

How 3D Technology Is Revolutionizing Supply Chain Visibility

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Global supply chains today are more interconnected than ever before. But when operations are sprawled across continents, disruptions can ripple instantly, like a stack of dominoes. This is why it’s important to ensure visibility into each moving part of your supply chain. 

Read also: Driving Business Efficiency Through Supply Chain Visibility

Yet many logistics networks still operate with blind spots, relying on outdated tools, static spreadsheets, or delayed reporting. 

Enter 3D technology.

With these innovations, we can build an interactive, real-time, data-rich replica of physical operations. From auditing warehouses to monitoring freight in transit, 3D tech is revolutionizing how businesses see and manage their supply chains.

Stay tuned until the end if you want to know more about how 3D technology is revolutionizing supply chain visibility. We’ll explore how these technologies bring next-level transparency to logistics and take a closer look at some of the tools changing the game for inventory tracking and site digitization.

From Flat Data to Full Dimension: Why 3D Is a Game-Changer

Supply chain management relies on data, but until recently, everything was mostly two-dimensional. Think of spreadsheets, barcodes, static floor plans, or siloed software platforms. These tools can only take you so far. 

In a world where a single late shipment or miscounted pallet can disrupt the activity of several businesses and organizations, we need richer, real-time insights. And that’s where 3D technology is proving its worth.

By capturing spatial data in three dimensions, companies gain a much clearer and more dynamic understanding of their facilities, assets, and workflows. Whether you’re managing inventory in a vast warehouse or coordinating container movement across international ports, 3D tech turns fragmented information into a cohesive, live snapshot.

Digital Twins for Warehouses

One of the most exciting (and practical) applications of 3D tech in logistics today is the digital twin. This is a virtual replica of a physical asset, operation, or facility that updates in real time based on incoming data. 

The technology is already in action, with global logistics giants like DHL and Maersk investing in digital twins to simulate warehouse layouts, identify bottlenecks, and optimize processes before making real-world changes.

To create a digital twin, sensors and 3D scanners collect real-time information from the physical environment (like equipment status, temperature, stock levels, or spatial configuration). That data is fed into the digital twin, where it can be analyzed, visualized, and manipulated safely. 

Once the twin is complete, you can simulate what happens if you rearrange shelving units, introduce automation, or increase throughput without moving a single box and disrupting current operations. It’s the smarter, safer way to plan, predict, and prevent.

3D Capture for Smarter Inventory and Facility Audits

Whether it’s inventory counting, safety checks, or layout planning, traditional audits often require walking through large facilities with clipboards or tablets, manually logging issues, or reconciling stock. Not only is this slow, but it’s also prone to error.

That’s where 3D scanning and spatial capture come in. Using LiDAR, structured light, or photogrammetry, companies can digitally capture entire warehouses, production floors, or storage yards in just minutes, creating highly accurate 3D models that can be explored remotely.

This is especially useful for inventory management and facility audits. With spatial data captured from multiple angles, businesses can quickly identify stock inconsistencies, blocked pathways, or underutilized space. These scans feed into digital platforms where users can measure distances, count items, or annotate changes—all from their laptop or mobile device.

To do this, you need a point cloud camera, which converts millions of spatial data points into detailed 3D representations of the environment. The device automatically captures high-resolution panoramic images and depth data that can be used for planning, auditing, or even integrating with warehouse management systems.

Transparency in Transit

In the current system, once goods leave the warehouse, visibility often drops off a cliff. This can be a problem, especially when customers, regulators, or your team want answers now, not next week.

3D technologies are starting to plug that gap.

With the help of 3D scanning tools combined with location-aware sensors, logistics teams can remotely monitor cargo condition, placement, and even the environment around a shipment. For example, a 3D scan of a shipping container at departure and arrival can help identify whether anything shifted, was mishandled, or got damaged en route. 

These tools also support remote auditing. 3D scans allow auditors to examine facilities and containers in detail from anywhere. Measurements, annotations, and comparisons can all be done digitally, making the process faster, more consistent, and less prone to error or subjectivity.

Wrap Up

3D technology can bring powerful visibility and precision to supply chains, from smarter audits to real-time monitoring. While cost and integration challenges remain, the momentum is already building. With practical tools already in play and adoption steadily rising, the leap to mainstream use isn’t as distant as it once seemed. The supply chain of the future is already starting to take shape, in 3D.

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Driving Business Efficiency Through Supply Chain Visibility

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In a dynamic business landscape, supply chain efficiency is pivotal to an enterprise’s success. Organizations will increasingly look to leverage innovative technologies to amplify visibility, efficiency, and collaboration, in order to meet customer expectations and maintain a competitive edge. Managing supply chain operations can be a highly inefficient, even chaotic, process in the absence of effective management systems. This is where supply chain visibility software can add considerable value.

Offering real-time visibility into an organization’s entire supply chain, this software enables businesses to swiftly identify and address issues, enhance decision-making, and reduce costs.

Read also: Supply Chain Visibility: Not an End, But a Tool

The Significance of Supply Chain Visibility

Supply chain visibility software enables organizations to track products, goods, and data across the supply chain – gaining live insights into their supply networks, identifying bottlenecks, optimizing inventory levels, enhancing customer service, and elevating overall operational efficiency. As per a study by Market Reports World, the global supply chain visibility software market size was valued at USD 1.205 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow to USD 4.928 billion by 2028 – highlighting the crucial role that such software is poised to play in the years ahead.

As organizations look to select the right supply chain visibility software from an expanding array of options, it is crucial to thoroughly assess the specific objectives and requirements of your business and ensure that the option you select is in alignment with these.

Key aspects to consider when selecting a supply chain visibility software 

1. Define Objectives and Requirements: Outline the specific challenges you intend to address with the supply chain visibility software. Do you require end-to-end visibility or a focus on specific areas? The clearer your requirements, the simpler it is to narrow down options and ensure that the software addresses your business’s unique challenges.

2. Think Scalable and Flexible: It is preferable to opt for software that offers scalability and is capable of adapting to your evolving business needs. Solutions that provide flexibility in their integration capabilities prove beneficial as they reduce the need to change software and retrain employees accordingly, with each significant transition in the business.

3. Evaluate User-Friendliness and Ease of Implementation: User interface intuitiveness has a significant positive impact and can help build a preference for your business among customers. Complex systems impede adoption. Thus, it is important to ensure the ease of implementation of the solution, and the availability of effective support by the software provider, to ensure a smooth transition.

4. Ensure Data Security and System Reliability: Robust security measures and system reliability are vital in supply chain visibility software, to prevent unauthorized access, data leaks, and downtime – all of which can disrupt operations and tarnish a company’s reputation.

Implementation Strategies for Supply Chain Visibility Software

After selecting a suitable software, a well-structured implementation strategy is essential to hit the ground running. Defining clear goals and objectives is crucial as they ensure alignment among team members and facilitate efforts towards common outcomes. Additionally, this clarity simplifies the process of measuring achievement as well as identifying areas that require improvement. An effective approach to ensuring comprehensive coverage of all objectives is assembling a specialized team comprising members from diverse departments. This cross-functional team can contribute their perspectives, articulate their requirements, and highlight their respective goals, thus ensuring a well-rounded understanding of the objectives.

Identifying KPIs aligned with goals – such as on-time delivery, inventory turnover, and supplier performance – and analyzing insights from the software to determine if they are being fulfilled, will provide a real-time understanding of the issues that need to be addressed. Based on the insights gathered from the software, a comprehensive data analysis can be performed to pinpoint areas of improvement.

Another important aspect of implementing new software is upskilling your employees. Comprehensive and practical training covering all technical aspects of the software adopted facilitates a seamless onboarding experience for the workforce.

Measuring Success of the Supply Chain Visibility System

The final step involves the continuous and ongoing process of analyzing KPIs across regular operations. Continue to assess operations by tracking and reporting KPIs related to on-time delivery, cycle times, and feedback from collaborations. Problems in supply chain management can very rapidly cause bottlenecks, underscoring the importance of frequent and diligent reviews for maintaining seamless operations. Access to software that provides useful and comprehensive analytics could potentially mean the difference between success and failure.

The Way Forward

The integration of supply chain visibility software is a significant strategic move that can reshape your supply chain operations. By going that extra mile to analyze objectives, test performance, gather feedback, and continually review operations, you ensure a successful implementation, and process optimization, which in turn contributes to enhancing your businesses’ competitiveness. It’s crucial to keep in mind that effective supply chain management is a continuous journey, requiring ongoing enhancement for sustained success – with visibility software making that process more seamless. Embracing visibility systems will empower your business to successfully build high-performance supply chains.

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Net Feasa Revolutionizes Supply Chain Visibility with Expanded Vessel Control Tower

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Net Feasa, renowned for its groundbreaking vessel-based wireless connectivity solutions for shipping containers, has unveiled an expanded Vessel Control Tower aimed at revolutionizing supply chain visibility. The upgraded platform now supports all IoT-enabled cargo, catering to both reefer manufacturers and dry box tracking providers on a single platform.

This advancement ensures seamless connectivity across various vendors for all IoT-enabled reefer and dry containers, offering crucial early notifications of temperature anomalies and potential fire threats. The Vessel Control Tower also facilitates visibility and alerts from strategically positioned IoT sensors on the vessel, including heat sensors on car decks, enabling early detection of heat anomalies, especially pertinent amid the rising incidents of fires aboard car-carrying ships due to the EV export boom.

Access to comprehensive reefer and dry container information on a unified platform onboard enhances monitoring efficiency and early threat detection, thereby bolstering crew safety measures. By consolidating data from diverse IoT-enabled cargo sources, the platform empowers crews to proactively address issues, minimize risks, and ensure smooth operations throughout voyages.

Mike Fitzgerald, Chairman of Net Feasa, expressed pride in this milestone achievement, emphasizing the platform’s role in enhancing safety, security, quality control, and operational efficiency in maritime transportation. Leveraging advanced wireless IoT networks and security expertise, the platform offers unparalleled insights and control over cargo conditions, enabling proactive threat detection and swift response to mitigate risks and optimize operations.

Key features of the Vessel Control Tower include real-time asset monitoring of multi-vendor reefers, proactive threat detection from smart containers, seamless integration with existing visualization platforms, customizable dashboards, and robust cyber-secure wireless networks.

With a commitment to crew and cargo safety, Net Feasa aims to reduce costs associated with damage and loss at sea while delivering exceptional value and service to the shipping industry. By amalgamating cutting-edge IoT technology with extensive industry experience, Net Feasa is setting a new standard for maritime visibility, security, quality control, and efficiency.

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Sensitech Unveils TempTale GEO X: Advancing Pharma Cold Chain Visibility and Logistics Management

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Sensitech, a renowned provider of supply chain visibility solutions, has introduced TempTale® GEO X, an innovative IoT temperature monitoring solution tailored specifically for the life sciences industry and logistics organizations. This cutting-edge solution is designed to deliver real-time monitoring and analytics for temperature-sensitive medicines and vaccines transported globally across various modes of transportation, including air, ocean, road, and rail. TempTale GEO X represents a significant step forward in enhancing cold chain compliance, supply chain efficiency, and sustainability outcomes in the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Key features of TempTale GEO X include real-time location visibility, temperature monitoring capabilities ranging from minus 95 degrees C to 55 degrees C, global connectivity flight compliance, a built-in screen for live product quality information display, and advanced battery management. When combined with the SensiWatch® platform and Lynx Logix™ digital solution, TempTale GEO X provides comprehensive real-time data and analytics for precise shipment visibility, alerting, and automation of critical decision-making processes.

With a focus on user-friendliness and efficiency in a fast-paced distribution environment, TempTale GEO X offers a seamless and intuitive interface. Additionally, Sensitech’s device returns-recycle-reuse program ensures scalability and sustainability benefits, making it a valuable asset for life sciences and logistics organizations.

Key benefits of TempTale GEO X for life sciences and logistics organizations include:
– Actionable insights and alerts for maintaining product quality and compliance through precise temperature monitoring, humidity, light, and location tracking.
– Intelligent automation to streamline manual processes and expedite handling with automatic documentation and alerts, enabling logistics and quality teams to make informed decisions while in-transit.
– Minimized handling, device management, and user errors with fully charged and calibrated devices for a true plug-and-play experience, integrated with Sensitech’s suite of connected cold chain solutions for proactive supply chain intelligence.

TempTale GEO X represents a significant advancement in enhancing visibility, compliance, and efficiency in the pharmaceutical cold chain, offering a comprehensive solution for addressing the evolving needs of the life sciences industry.

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John Galt Solutions and FourKites Join Forces to Revolutionize End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility

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John Galt Solutions, a global leader in automating supply chain planning, has announced a strategic partnership with FourKites, a leading supply chain visibility provider. This collaboration aims to empower businesses with real-time insights and a comprehensive view of their end-to-end supply chain, enabling them to make informed decisions faster and more effectively.

In today’s fast-paced and intricate business environment, extending supply chain visibility beyond transportation is crucial. The partnership between FourKites and John Galt Solutions combines the AI-powered Atlas Planning Platform with real-time supply chain insights, offering companies the ability to detect and mitigate risks, track shipments, optimize warehouse plans, and achieve continuous visibility across the entire supply chain ecosystem.

Nimesh Patel, Vice President of Global Alliances & Partnerships at FourKites, emphasized the transformative value of this partnership, allowing customers to leverage visibility data throughout the broader supply chain planning process. The collaboration aims to accelerate a company’s competitive advantage by providing a connected view of the supply chain, enhancing decision-making capabilities.

Alex Pradhan, Global Product Strategy Leader at John Galt Solutions, highlighted the importance of immediate access to the right data and insights across the connected enterprise. The partnership with FourKites ensures a fully connected view of the supply chain, empowering business leaders with extended visibility. This collaboration aims to enhance the ability to sense, mitigate risk, and create agile, disruption-proof supply chains, enabling customers to stay ahead in navigating challenging scenarios with confidence.

The joint efforts of John Galt Solutions and FourKites signify a commitment to delivering mission-critical intelligence, revolutionizing how businesses approach supply chain visibility. Through this partnership, companies can navigate complexities with precision and agility, ultimately driving superior results in today’s dynamic business landscape.

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Supply Chain Visibility: Harnessing Logistics To Drive Value – Part I

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Find out how logistics play a pivotal role in the supply chain and how such an intricate network can be effectively managed.

This is the first installment of a two-part series discussing how COVID-19 has disproportionally affected supply chain logistics and how tracking and tracing should be used to improve resiliency.

A business’ success hinges on efficient logistics and supply chain management. What once started as the cart behind the retail horse has now become the driver. In fact, according to Digital Commerce 365, 50% of consumers admit that delivery factors such as delivery cost or delays affect their purchasing decisions.

Supply Chain Logistics: Decades Of Influence

Supply chains date back to the beginning of recorded history. The first documented and organized courier service dates to 2400 BCE in Egypt. Since then, supply chains have enabled kingdoms and republics to triumph in war. In modern times, logistics have been critical to the success of companies. Through efficient logistics, businesses can win the profitability war.

Logistics is about more than just moving a product or service. It’s about moving a product or service efficiently, and effectively, and consistently. Effective exchanges cannot occur without efficient movements, and few businesses can capture and maintain customers without consistency. Through consistent operations, efficient and visible product movements, and effective management of customer expectations, companies can create added value throughout the supply chain.

Establishing The Goal: Transparency In Logistics To Create Resiliency In The Supply Chain

The oil and gas industry is plagued with uncertainty along its entire supply and value chains—from production and exploration to refining and transportation. The midstream and downstream sectors in particular face complexities and uncertainties, including strict regulatory requirements, intense safety protocols, fluctuating demand, variable supply, uncertain lead, and delivery times.

On their own, these factors are difficult to resolve. However, oil and gas companies are faced with a barrage of issues making operational decision-making particularly arduous. While companies may not have complete control over all these factors, they can control their logistics.

Logistics are key to maintaining a healthy supply chain that can deliver supplies to production facilities or finished products to customers. Conversely, lack of visibility and transparency into the logistics along the oil and gas supply chain interrupts a company’s network and interferes with its ability to exercise control and make informed decisions.

Struggling Through Complications: Dealing With A Pandemic

The pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities of supply chains—gaps in supply chain visibility. Before the pandemic, some organizations had made documented efforts to improve such visibility, but now, these efforts are more than just opportunities—they are necessities. Visibility has become an expectation—a requirement even—rather than a privilege.

Supply chain challenges don’t always indicate product shortages. Amid product abundance, supply chain hurdles still exist. The interconnectedness of the supply chain leaves it vulnerable to compound fractures when threats or other factors permeate even a single step of the logistics process. As an example, a shortage of truck drivers puts stress along the entire supply chain—not merely on the delivery step. When there are no available truck drivers, the warehouses become full. When the warehouses become full, they
can no longer accept new product shipments.

When warehouses cannot accept new product shipments, ships are stuck “in the queue” waiting to dock and offload. The supply chain is left overwhelmed and overworked. In October 2021, the Port of Savannah reported that 80,000 shipping containers were stacked and awaiting a ship that would take them to their final destination or a truck that would transport the containers to a subsequent warehouse. The port had never reported being so full; in fact, the October capacity reflected a 50% increase from the port’s norm.

Even with the hardships of the pandemic, companies must be resilient and battle through to maintain control over their network. Tracking and tracing innovative technologies have illustrated this most clearly. These technologies provide real-time movements to enable suppliers to manage their operations proactively, set actionable and attainable customer expectations and, ultimately, improve customer satisfaction.

Awareness of tracking and tracing technologies has increased over the past two decades. Consequently, such technologies have gained recognition as mechanisms for improved supply chain integration,
planning and control, and overall supply chain management. This recognition has ignited researchers to more deeply consider what it truly means to “digitalize” the supply chain.

Such an understanding includes generating awareness of the role that digitalization has in performance improvement, as well as the risks, challenges, and other threats that companies faced with digitalization may encounter. In simpler words, tracking and tracing are critical components of supply chain management and can only be leveraged to their full potential when a company has undergone digital transformation.

How Do You Achieve Supply Chain Resiliency?
“Knowledge is power,” as Sir Frances Bacon proclaimed in 1597. Companies need to establish the ability to track and trace their assets, as the digital transformation creates a stronger and more resilient supply chain.

Pandemics, storms, labor issues, and a myriad of other external factors can wreak havoc on a carefully constructed supply chain. Therefore, the more complex the business, the more a company must rely on timely visibility and access to accurate information to maintain a proper supply of feedstocks or finished goods and create value across the entire supply chain.

Digital transformation drives tangible results that improve decision-making across the complexity of the supply chain. As General John Pershing declared, “infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars.” Through efficient logistics, businesses can win the profitability war.

The second installment of this series, titled “Supply Chain Visibility: Harnessing Logistics To Drive Value – Part 2,” will outline and discuss four tangible benefits of supply chain visibility that can come only after a company recognizes the urgency and importance of digitalization for an intricate supply chain network.

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, International Trade

Using Technology to Improve Food Supply Chain Visibility

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As they address the issues of 2020 and try to avoid repeating the same mistakes, food and beverage companies embrace more technology to help them gain higher levels of supply chain visibility. Here is how.

 

Supply chain visibility has become a hot button for corporate leaders as a result of the pandemic, which left many companies reassessing how they obtain, share, and disseminate data with their trading partners. According to PwC, visibility enables companies to know at any given time where a product is in the supply chain.

 

“This enhances decision making agility for production and distribution decisions,” PwC points out. “Food supply chain visibility is increasingly a standard expectation for consumers, especially with an emerging middle class.”

 

A Bigger Spotlight on Visibility

 

Where stockouts of critical supplies early in the pandemic—plus ongoing supply shortages—forced companies to pay more attention to this aspect of their operations in 2020, the food supply chain has always been held to a higher level of scrutiny. Pre-COVID, for example, food and beverage companies were already strengthening efforts around “farm to fork” traceability while complying with new government regulations in this area.

 

This was partly driven by the introduction of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which in 2011 shifted the focus from “responding” to foodborne illness to “preventing” it. When it became a law, FSMA expanded the responsibility of ensuring the safety of the food supply to many different points in the global supply chain (for both human and animal food). Last year, pandemic-related challenges pushed the food industry even further down the road to securing high levels of supply chain visibility across manufacturers, farmers, distributors, restaurants, and grocers.

 

These new obstacles pushed companies to rethink their approaches to supply chain visibility, traceability, and transparency. Where in the past the most popular reaction was to increase inventory levels, this approach consumes working capital, requires extra physical space, and often leaves food companies “holding the bag” on inventory that’s perishable or in danger of expiring. Instead, companies are choosing to implement supply chain solutions such a WMS, MES and TMS that ensure a real time visibility on all inventory and advanced traceability capabilities to pinpoint the origins of a given ingredient quickly and efficiently.

 

Supply Chain, Disrupted

 

In Food Processing, Robert Swientek explains how the COVID-19 pandemic triggered panic buying and food hoarding that subsequently disrupted the world’s food supply chains. This exposed defects in the industry, leaving some store shelves empty right at a time when an oversupply of food animals crowded farms. Concurrently, goods that would normally be distributed to restaurants had no place to go due to mandatory shutdowns.

 

“The food supply chain is one of the most critical supply chains in any economy,” Adroit North America’s Richard Sides told Food Processing. “Other events have shaken the food supply chain, like tariffs and foodborne outbreaks, but COVID-19 had a greater impact because it affected the entire process—from the field to the consumer.”

 

According to Swientek, the nuts and bolts of productive supply chains can be found at the organizational level and in manufacturing plants. “Gaining a better understanding and grasp of your production capabilities, processes and data platforms, demand forecasting, procurement and sourcing and inventory management,” he writes, “can help you optimize your upstream supply chains.”

 

Now, more companies are turning to supply chain software and platforms that enable end-to-end visibility. “The pandemic has brought a renewed focus for manufacturers in making sure they are becoming more transparent and agile within their supply chain processes,” Niels Anderson writes in Food Safety Tech.

 

“They are realizing thanks to this disruption that suppliers can’t always deliver and a backup plan is crucial to keep things moving,” Anderson continues. “One option is to implement technology that helps track visibility and transparency to better assess what is needed and to offer alternative suppliers. Having supply chain transparency requires companies to know what is happening upstream in the supply chain and communicate this knowledge both internally and externally.”

 

Managing Costs and Identifying New Solutions

 

Supply chain visibility is about more than just understanding where raw materials and finished goods are at any point in the global supply chain. It’s also about becoming more efficient and profitable. In How Supply Chain Visibility Helps Restaurants Improve Their Business, CH Robinson points to supply chain visibility as being key to managing costs and identifying solutions in the food sector.

 

“While it has always been important, visibility is now an essential element of successful supply chains,” the transportation provider writes. “Insight to shipment status is only one aspect of true supply chain visibility. Complex supply chains often combine costs, which can impede clear understanding when changes to costs do occur.”

 

The transportation provider also says that the foodservice industry needs “connected” supply chains. “Simply managing the supply chain isn’t enough in today’s market,” CH Robinson adds. “As the foodservice industry continues to evolve for the future, it’s critical that the supply chain is viewed as a roadmap. Continuous improvement and ongoing supply chain optimization strategies will continue to differentiate acceptable foodservice companies from superior ones.”

 

Generix Group North America provides a series of solutions within our Supply Chain Hub product suite to create efficiencies across an entire supply chain. Our solutions are in use around the world and our experience is second-to-none. We invite you to contact us to learn more.