BMW's connected supply chain

 Hello everyone,

I am Sreelakshmi V, final year MBA student from Amrita School of Business, Coimbatore. In this blog, I would like to share some insights on connected supply chain of BMW. 

Connected supply chain (CSC) is a technology that is focused on innovation for improving the experience of each stakeholders. It is not just about visibility in supply chain but it’s about one single defined system. All the parts of the system will act together, by sharing data, insights and providing tangible benefits. It is about reacting to the changing market conditions by using every link in the value chain.

Many companies small or large try to create efficiency of their own, to save the valuable resources that have. So to be efficient BMW started the Connected Supply Chain in 2016 and this is going to last long as new technologies are coming up every day. The challenges of logistics faced by BMW is very large with them having 30 plants worldwide at 4000 different locations. Managing this huge volume takes more time and human involvement and thus cost a huge amount of money. In order to save this, they started the Connected Supply Chain.

With the inception of the CSC program more suppliers and transportation system have been bought into the system. This allows the BMW to create a seamless and transparent process from supplier through dealer. Each car will be fitted with a sensors or trackers which allow the dealers to know where the car is at any time. They are also planning to have autonomous module so that the car will drive it’s owns from the final inspection bay to the car park. This reduces the time as well as the human intervention.

This also allows them to use digital technologies to sort different parts that arrive in their plant and store it in the correct bin to deliver those to the teams at precisely the moment they need them. This reduces the time and are cheaper. Also, the job of managing goods inbound will be done by machines. Smartphone are also used in this system, QR codes scanners will help to give all related information about the parts to each and every worker.

This program of BMW is the ultimate proof of the power of digital technologies. And they have to share this with other companies to get a common standard.

Thank you for reading. Hope you all liked it.