Today’s supply chains are complex, global, and driven by customer needs. They are ecosystems of manufacturers, suppliers, partner companies, forwarders, logistics companies, and customers. Each has its own established way of doing things and IT infrastructure to support individual business processes. Even within a single organization, this leads to dispersed information silos. The information does not flow between partners, or it does but with an enormous amount of laborious human effort. All this prevents stakeholders from unlocking their full business potential.
How to achieve the kind of accurate visibility within the supply chain that would enable you to predict disruptions (even those resulting from ever-shrinking warehouse availability around ports and terminal facilities), respond to unplanned occurrences, and manage warehouse and in-transit inventory? Supporting ground handling operations, including available dock allocation, dynamic scheduling of pickup and delivery, and synchronizing payments with customs releases, is crucial for future-proofing.
Logistics/transportation control towers offer advance shipping notifications, delivery data, and track-and-trace information – an insight into inbound and outbound logistics. The need to act quickly has never been more pressing. To respond effectively, companies need real-time intelligence and actionable recommendations to improve decision-making and help mitigate disruptions and risk.
Problem
In the realm of multimodal logistics, complexity and dependencies between aging disparate systems and varying data interchange formats are significant daily challenges worldwide. The global supply chain upheaval, in evidence since early 2020, exposed the fractured state of logistics affairs between road, rail, air, sea, and inland waterway transportation.
Theoretical planning and optimization models of the so-called Smart Supply Chain Management have struggled to effectively deal with volatile results of unpredictable delays and manufacturing shortages of raw materials or finished goods. Meanwhile, process automation augmented with AI, machine learning, and scalable IoT, frequently integrated with Blockchain technology, has moved to the forefront, extending port-to-port transportation (unimodal models) to multimodal augmented capabilities. Many talk about integration, information, and intelligence to transform their supply chain, but the warehouses are full of clerks with ledgers and bar code scanners! In other words, more and more people are being involved to support commonly used control towers instead of leveraging the machine learning capability for track & trace and demanding a comprehensive solution.
Technology is the cornerstone of transformation in supply chains and logistics. The use of big data to extract insights can help reduce friction and improve decision-making. That’s best achieved with purpose-built control towers designed to optimize core logistics functions.
The Block enRoll – Logistics/Transportation control tower
We specialize in modular, component-based next-generation control towers with the ability to handle multiple export and import messages formats, provide item and pallet level inventory scans, and support forecasting and planning models for supply chains impacted by port congestion, weather, strife, pandemic, and driver shortages. Real-time AI streams from every connected warehouse enable more effective control tower operations for status alerts, mitigation, and alternate solution pathways. It is built into the Dock enRoll, Asset enRoll, and Pay enRoll interconnected design.
Block enRoll 2.0 is a multimodal manifold service for integrating diverse cargo handling systems, real-time customs releases, warehousing, transfers, tracking and tracing, scheduling and pickup, provenance and micropayments, based on blockchain validated delivery milestones, all the while augmenting human effort with AI, ML and IoT sensors.
A topology illustrating the interconnected modules of the Block enRoll 2.0 Manifold
Here’s a quick look at the main components:
The IBM Sterling Supply Chain Intelligence Suite leverages AI and automation to optimize supply chain operations, enhancing resilience, agility, and sustainability. This solution provides real-time visibility and actionable insights to rapidly address disruptions, improve inventory management, and streamline traceability with blockchain technology. It allows organizations to collaborate more effectively, make data-driven decisions, and adapt workflows to dynamic challenges, making supply chains smarter and more sustainable.
The IBM Sterling Supply Chain Intelligence Suite combines AI and automation to make supply chains more adaptive, sustainable, and resilient. Key features include: