The shift to consumer-delivery models during the COVID-19 pandemic has upended supply chain operations, and in the grocery retail sector alone online sales increased 100% in March.Significant investment in technology and automation will be necessary to meet the delivery movement. With 40% of essential items now being bought online, supply chains need to evolve operations to accommodate much higher volumes in direct-to-consumer shipping.Agility in supply chain operations will be the new standard to meet the evolving needs of manufacturers, retailers and distribution centers. The first objective is to enable end-to-end inventory visibility — which will allow the entire supply chain to quickly respond to shifts in consumer demand without similar ebbs and flows in labor and resource allocation.The pandemic disruption proved to supply chain executives that technology to provide end-to-end visibility throughout a global supply chain would be the best way forward.Supply chain executives accustomed to B2B processes will swiftly learn a hard lesson, if they don’t move to automate quickly and effectively. The present pandemic is a true test of the ability to flex with new demands, especially those that will now be primarily consumer-driven.By giving products a digital unique identifier at the origin of the supply chain, full inventory transparency at the product-level is possible. This is vital to meet a continued increase in delivery expectations. Digitization of the goods through technologies such as RFID and bar codes provide that full transparency of inventory, at the product-level throughout every step of the supply chain.In looking towards the future, most consumers expect to return to their pre-pandemic levels of in-store grocery shopping and more than a fourth of consumers expect to be ordering more groceries online in the future
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Automation is really really important in a supply chain as it improves the productivity rate and decreases delivery times and errors. However automation cannot be always desirable as flexibility too is something required in a supply chain to sustain it. We saw how many manufacturers of different sectors like clothing, luggage and electronics companies like razer quickly switched to making or sourcing masks according to the situation. Flexibility is also a survival factor in supply chains.
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