Navin Rajendran’s Post

Today coping with supply chain disruptions and uncertainty is indeed a critical challenge for businesses. Understanding and harnessing the power of digital twins could prove instrumental in staying ahead of the curve. Digital twins could pave the way for autonomous logistics systems, unlocking the potential for predictive maintenance, improved operational efficiency, minimizing downtime and orchestrating everything from inventory restocking and warehousing to transportation and delivery. Digital twins empower logistics operators to create robust and resilient supply chains, capable of weathering unforeseen events and disruptions.

Innovation is making a difference, automating the loading/unloading process is removing strenuous activity and moving skilled labor to focus on value add, and strategic tasks.

E-commerce has clearly driven more companies to explore the 3PL route. Expected to cross the $1 trillion mark for the first time ever in 2022, e-commerce shippers are turning to their 3PL providers for help meeting changing customer expectations and dealing with the supply chain disruption, labor constraints, transportation woes, inflation and other challenges that have become the “new normal” in today’s operating environment.

Digitalization in industrial facilities is critical to achieving new levels of safety, sustainability, and profitability and AI is a key enabler for that transformation. A new paradigm that combines data science and AI algorithms with software and domain expertise to deliver measurable business outcomes for the specific needs of capital-intensive industries. Industrial AI disrupts industries by lowering barriers to adoption, offering new opportunities for industrial organizations to significantly reduce costs, improve efficiency, and transform their operations.

The real boom for digital twins comes from AI and its predictive capabilities. In the past, creating spatial models digitally was exciting but little more than a way of visualizing an object statically. Today, all the data we have from sensors, historical performance, and inputs on behavior can be linked to the spatial model and predict future behavior by changing different inputs. The advantage of a digital twin is the ability to generate simulated data. The simulated data generated can then be used to train the AI model.

Capturing all communication, data and reporting in one place will yield greater operational efficiencies, provide customers with an end-to-end view of their supply chain, and help them better understand total landed cost from purchase order to inception to final delivery. With comprehensive knowledge of their supply chain spend, customers can make more informed and dynamic decisions to ensure their freight gets to where it needs to be as efficiently, and with as much flexibility, as possible.

The pandemic has accelerated what would have been years of transformational efforts into just a few months, as companies rapidly pivoted to address the needs of a new world. For many digital leaders, the challenge now is to take forward the learnings of recent months and ensure they maintain a rapid pace of change. Need of the hour is strategies that drive commercial growth, manage risk and future-proof their businesses for the long-term. Simple example, Digital technology is also improving people’s ability to work from home - which depends on the type of jobs and tasks to be done, as well as digital capacity — varies significantly across and within countries.

Faced with a combination of rising fuel prices and an industry-wide strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50%, the shipping sector is innovating as never before in an effort to boost fuel efficiency and reduce its environmental impact. From the development of novel hybrid electric propulsion systems to AI driven improvements in operational efficiency, no stone is being left unturned. But arguably some of the most intriguing advances are being made in a field that harks back to the earliest days of seafaring: WIND Propulsion.

Efficiency, optimization, speed and timing have always been crucial in any business, especially when it comes to logistics and transportation, no matter whether it concerns distributors, end customers, transportation firms, retailers or any part of a supply chain. Without doubts, modern-day manufacturing, and retail transformations, technology disruptions and digitalization of data made modern logistics providers more flexible, fast and reliable. Using the correct set of metrics can lead you to realize if you have the proper balance between service and cost. Transportation measures of effectiveness should be considered critical to any improvement plan.