What is the biggest pain point for a sup­ply chain today? Sim­ply put, it’s meet­ing cus­tomer demand, effi­cient­ly. Every sup­ply chain, large or small, would ben­e­fit from bet­ter under­stand­ing its plan­ning and exe­cu­tion man­age­ment from design, to man­u­fac­tur­ing, to deliv­ery, to operation.

A dig­i­tal twin can pro­vide the vis­i­bil­i­ty a sup­ply chain needs to under­stand how its own process­es work, or don’t work, and then how to improve them. Improved process­es lead to bet­ter prod­ucts or ser­vices, and with those come hap­pi­er customers.

That’s what Hala Zeine, then pres­i­dent of SAP’s Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Chain dis­cussed dur­ing her keynote at ASUG’s Expe­ri­ence for Sup­ply Chain and Pro­cure­ment in 2018.

“We can­not solve prob­lems for mod­ern peo­ple with­out mod­ern tools” she said. ​“And a great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence relies on a great prod­uct expe­ri­ence. To do this, you need to be able to pro­vide cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty in every sin­gle part of the sup­ply chain, you need to have vis­i­bil­i­ty, and you need to have busi­ness innovation.”

Bring­ing Intel­li­gence to Your Sup­ply Chain 

How do you keep the cus­tomer at the cen­ter of your busi­ness plan­ning? Intel­li­gent­ly, of course. ​“Intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies,” Zeine said, ​“can help sup­ply chains make bet­ter sense of data, plan and pre­dict out­comes, and opti­mize the entire prod­uct life cycle includ­ing the cus­tomer experience.” 

She cau­tioned, how­ev­er, that it’s not just about adopt­ing new tech­nolo­gies. A sup­ply chain must also rethink how the process­es behind them work. ​“An intel­li­gent enter­prise con­nects these tools togeth­er with­in a sup­ply chain to bet­ter design, man­u­fac­ture, deliv­er, and man­age products.”

Con­nect­ing the Links

So, what is an intel­li­gent enter­prise? Accord­ing to Zeine, it brings togeth­er all the lines of busi­ness to work togeth­er in an inte­grat­ed man­ner, with process­es infused with intel­li­gence and con­nec­tiv­i­ty, all on one dig­i­tal plat­form pow­ered by SAP HANA on the cloud. 

“It’s being able to iden­ti­fy an emerg­ing prob­lem using con­nec­tiv­i­ty, iden­ti­fy­ing what is need­ed to resolve that prob­lem, and then address­ing it before the prob­lem occurs,” she said. ​“That’s the world I want to live in.”

Pro­vid­ing a Clear Line of Sight 

Zeine asked, ​“How do we push the sup­ply chain into the future and pre­pare the com­pa­nies to do it?” Give them vis­i­bil­i­ty by cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal twin of their end-to-end sup­ply chain. 

What good is adopt­ing the lat­est tech­nolo­gies — the Inter­net of Things (IoT), machine learn­ing, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, ana­lyt­ics, big data, blockchain, 3D print­ing, and robot­ics — if you can’t see how your process­es are work­ing or not work­ing? Man­ag­ing your sup­ply chain requires your abil­i­ty to man­age logis­tics chal­lenges along with cus­tomer requirements.

See­ing Double 

A dig­i­tal twin is a vir­tu­al repli­ca of your phys­i­cal assets, sys­tems, or process­es. Backed by real-time data using intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies, a dig­i­tal twin equips you to make more-informed deci­sions and adapt to chang­ing con­di­tions faster as you observe the con­di­tions in your par­al­lel simulation.

“The future of the sup­ply chain,” Zeine said, ​“is some­where where the dig­i­tal world and the phys­i­cal world are entan­gled. It’s where you can sim­u­late in one and exe­cute in anoth­er.” Vis­i­bil­i­ty helps reduce inven­to­ry and improve lead times, help­ing to meet cus­tomer expec­ta­tions as well as busi­ness objectives.

Kinks in the Chain 

Although there are sup­ply chains that have already adopt­ed an intel­li­gent approach and are using a dig­i­tal twin to stream­line and improve busi­ness process­es, not every­one is on board with this idea yet. 

“Sup­ply chains have always been a place where most inno­va­tion takes place,” Zeine not­ed. ​“I believe every sup­ply chain pro­fes­sion­al aspires to liv­ing in a dig­i­tal real­i­ty. The will is there, and the tech­nol­o­gy is real­ly com­ing to matu­ri­ty to be adopt­ed at mass scale. The trick is to get it done. I believe a lot of com­pa­nies are on that jour­ney already. I think any­one who thinks it’s too far off may lose out.” 

What’s the Next Link?

What’s next is already being dis­cussed. ​“We’re mov­ing toward a hybrid world,” Zeine said. ​“It’s dig­i­tal and nondig­i­tal.” Con­sumers want to be able to inter­act with a com­pa­ny, and be rec­og­nized as the same cus­tomer, whether dig­i­tal­ly or in person.

“The omnichan­nel expe­ri­ence,” Zeine added, ​“will no longer be just about a front-end expe­ri­ence. It’s also a sup­ply chain expe­ri­ence because every store will need to become a ware­house.” For exam­ple, a cus­tomer may first explore a prod­uct or ser­vice online, but then want to try or see it at a phys­i­cal store before pur­chas­ing it. The app the cus­tomer uses online should be capa­ble of iden­ti­fy­ing the near­est phys­i­cal store that car­ries that prod­uct, and then also reserve it for the cus­tomer so that it isn’t sold to some­one else. ​“That move­ment between sup­ply chain and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence would be delight­ful,” Zeine said.

The Big-Pic­ture View 

Even beyond cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, the ben­e­fits of a dig­i­tal sup­ply chain can extend to work­er safe­ty. ​“We have cam­eras inside trucks to mea­sure dri­ver behav­ior,” Zeine said. ​“But what if we use sen­sors and cam­eras to mea­sure fatigue or expo­sure to noise and oth­er things,” she asked. With that kind of infor­ma­tion, a sup­ply chain can bet­ter plan for work­er safe­ty and productivity. 

Some­thing else that Zeine is very pas­sion­ate about is the envi­ron­ment. ​“The envi­ron­men­tal impact and the busi­ness impact are final­ly mov­ing in the same tra­jec­to­ry,” she said. ​“No one wants to over­pro­duce. But with tech­nol­o­gy, we can pro­duce the same or more with less. And if we still have waste, we can con­nect com­pa­nies in a whole new way and tru­ly cre­ate a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my where we use each other’s waste and upcy­cle it for anoth­er pur­pose. That can only be pos­si­ble, of course, if each com­pa­ny con­nects dig­i­tal­ly with others.” 

Zeine believes there are great things ahead, and a new dig­i­tal real­i­ty is on the hori­zon for the sup­ply chain indus­try. Eas­i­er for sup­ply chains and delight­ful for con­sumers sounds like some­thing to look for­ward to. 

If you’re look­ing to learn how your peers are doing more with enter­prise asset and sup­ply chain man­age­ment, you should join us at the SAP-Cen­tric EAM & Sup­ply Chain con­fer­ence, March 16 – 18 in San Anto­nio, Texas. Ear­ly-bird reg­is­tra­tion is avail­able through Feb. 7, and ASUG mem­bers receive $200 off reg­is­tra­tion. You can also reg­is­ter for our web­cast, ​“The State of the Sup­ply Chain for SAP Cus­tomers.”