SEE THROUGH

Logistics Insight Asia, 1/5/2009

BOB GILL, Group Editor

Visibility is still lacking in the supply chain, according to IBM’s recent Global Chief Supply Chain Officer study, which involved face-to-face interviews with 400 senior executives across 29 industries in 25 countries around the world. Their top challenge is overwhelming and fragmented data, which makes it difficult to put together a clear picture of what is happening or has happened in the supply chain.

Worse still, having acknowledged the problem, the CSOs admit that it is too costly and too difficult to do much about it, with the consequence that this “visibility problem” is way down the corporate fix-it list.

When you look at what came in as the number two issue in the survey – supply chain risk – the consequences of poor visibility become even more pronounced. Sixty percent of respondents cited risk as an escalating concern; not surprising given the number of supply chain shocks over recent years, such as from strikes, terrorism, oil prices, and contaminated food. Without adequate visibility through the chain, the adverse eff ect of such events can only be amplified.

Thankfully, rather than just delivering bad news, IBM is proposing a solution, with its Smarter Supply Chain of the Future. This is Instrumented – deep sensing capabilities via technologies such as RFID provide comprehensive information; Interconnected – global networks of supply chains plan and make decisions together; and Intelligent – smarter systems can make decisions without human intervention, increasing responsiveness.

One area where IBM has already begun to apply such concepts is the food industry. As was pointed out at the recent Asean Food Traceability seminar (organized by IBM in conjunction with Logistics Insight Asia and Asia Food Journal), even a simple packet of soup contains 400 ingredients. In the event of a food poisoning event, proper visibility (i.e. the what, when and where of its manufacture and transport) is essential to help identify the source of the contamination.

In May, IBM and technology partner FXA announced that they would be working with Vietnam’s food sector to introduce an RFID-based traceability system for the country’s multi-billion dollar seafood industry, which will provide visibility across that supply chain with a view to ensuring safety and freshness upon arrival in all-important global export markets.

And over in Thailand, IBM is helping to equip fresh food chain Betagro with kiosks that provide immediate traceability data on chicken and pork items simply by scanning the item bar code. Shoppers can get information such as farm name and location, animal age and gender, plus details of production processes used. Now that’s pretty smart.

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