- 80+ percent of supply chain leaders want tracking tools to enable real-time reporting.
- Only 13 percent have complete visibility into the end-to-end supply chain.
Supply chain expert Peter Liddell, KPMG Partner in Charge of Asia Pacific Supply Chain Advisory, says that a lack of visibility – together with the high risk choke points in key parts of the goods and services supply chain caused by COVID – will lead to shortages of high demand goods into Australia during peak trading periods.
“With disruption of supply chains – especially in air freight – getting imported foods into the country is vital. The coming holiday season highlights the importance of forward planning,” he says. “We do have a solution: a powered supply chain with predictive modelling capability providing visibility that can cover an organisation and its extended value chain to help manage through periods of supply disruptions caused by crises like COVID.”
He said that right now, KPMG is experiencing heightened demand for integrated supply chain risk management solutions.
“Fortunately, there are cost-effective digital solutions available to help domestic supply chains successfully navigate these challenges,” Mr Liddell said. “These are Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled digital solutions which can help a company by drawing upon internal and external data sources to predict risks and disruptions before they occur.”
Peter Liddell said that, in doing so, these tools help businesses to assess the operational, financial and reputational impacts of future supply chain risks – and take advantage of best-practice process architectures, embedding robust operational controls. This can allow businesses to anticipate and quickly respond to supply continuity problems.
Using AI to protect enterprise value, KPMG’s Supply Chain Predictor – just launched to market -is a state-of-the-art cloud based AI tool used to predict and mitigate operational risks and disruptions before they are likely to occur. It also enables simulation of alternative supply chain strategies through a ‘digital twin’ to assess the potential impact of any adjustment made within the extended supply chain
“Data driven insights help predict supply chain risk and disruption,” said Mr Liddell. “The ‘digital twin’ is the most spoken phrase in every corporate at present. In Supply Chain terms, it refers to the ability to simultaneously showcase the existing supply chain model next to the future supply chain – Predictor has this capability and clients who see the demo love it – many technologies speak about it – but very few currently have the capability.”
He emphasized that Supply Chain Predictor was ideally suited to the Australian and global agribusiness sectors including horticulture.
“As an example, the use of predictive analytics to sense biosecurity outbreaks for enhanced biosecurity management and proactively protect Australia’s agribusiness industry can provide local companies with a significant advantage,” he said. “Predictive management can assist in a range of industries.”
‘Human-based systems cannot absorb the level of data that an AI system can absorb. The evidence out of the deployment of these systems is that they are more accurate and their ability to absorb and analyse data is highly sophisticated. They can link changes and pick up challenges that humans don’t or can’t.’
Another key example is the ability a predictive supply chain tool has to tap into global trends including geopolitical developments enabling a bigger and more detailed picture of a local industry. The wine industry is a typical example of an area which can benefit from predictive data.
