Manufacturing

Top ten supply chain trends for 2013

17 December 2012

IDC Manufacturing Insights has highlighted the top ten supply chain predictions for the year ahead.

Supply chain responsiveness is a first principle, including improving forecast accuracy, certainly; while also driving for more flexible and agile factory networks and broader visibility

Simon Ellis, IDC Manufacturing Insights The top ten supply chain trends for manufacturing in 2013 are:

1. Resiliency becomes a priority for end users looking to master 'massive multi-dimensionality’
2. On the supply side of the supply chain, recognising the inherent cost of long lead-times, manufacturers continue to look at global networks through the lens of both regional and country-level sourcing
3. On the demand side of the supply chain, recognising the need for better service levels and mass customisation, manufacturers look again to postponement techniques and data analytics to drive more effective customer insights and ‘smarter’ fulfilment
4. End user IT organisations will have to support a more productive supply chain ecosystem
5. Service excellence becomes a strategic priority
6. Supply chains will optimise omni-channel customer service and cost by enabling trustworthy, efficient and effective supply chains
7. End users will focus efforts to improve collaboration both upstream with suppliers and downstream with customers to better compete in a faster world
8. Supply chains will invest in technologies that enable visibility, visualisation and virtualisation
9. The ‘modern’ supply chain gets ‘smarter’
10. The big data ‘era’ dawns for supply chain organisations.

"In 2013, supporting the productive enterprise, the necessity for speed in the context of complexity and data overload will require that supply chains embrace resiliency and become ‘massively multi-dimensional’,” said Simon Ellis, practice director, IDC Manufacturing Insights. “Supply chain responsiveness is a first principle, including improving forecast accuracy, certainly; while also driving for more flexible and agile factory networks and broader visibility."

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