Summary

1/ THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) AND BIG DATA

2/ ROBOTS AND AUTOMATION

3/ DRONES AND SELF-DRIVING SYSTEMS

4/ 3D PRINTING

5/ QUANTUM COMPUTING

6/ BLOCKCHAIN

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Logistics and supply chain management have been defined by traditional methods and the slow adoption of new technology. But refining existing tech has reached its practical limit, and the demands of global businesses and changing customer expectations are pushing change.

 

Customers are asking for shorter lead times, lower prices, and more frequent, smaller deliveries. And the costs of mistakes, inefficiencies, and missed deadlines is growing as competition increases. To meet these evolving expectations and challenges, logistics will soon adopt a slew of innovative, disruptive technologies, transforming the industry forever.

 

The move to digital supply chain management, leveraging the power of the Internet of Things to ‘smarten’ logistics, will redefine what it means to keep an eye on a delivery. Big data will allow a level of optimisation unheralded by the past, and the new, smart automation of warehouses will vastly improve efficiency while lowering overheads.

 

By investing in drones, selfdriving systems, and 3D printing, the way products are delivered will undergo transformative change. And quantum processing and Blockchain offer new, exciting opportunities for supply chain management. In short, the future of logistics is hightech, defined by a new array of smart advances that offer a profound break with the past.

 

1/ THE INTERNET OF THINGS AND BIG DATA

 

“In my specific area, we’re just starting to see Internet of Things (IoT) technology really take hold because this industry is… a bit medieval in terms of adopting leading-edge technology. Logistics companies tend to be slow followers, in most cases, except perhaps for the UPSes and the FedExes of the world.” –

John Maley, global leader for freight logistics at IBM

 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the connectivity that allows smart devices to talk to one another, and it’s at the foundation of the supply chain management of the future. By gathering and sharing information from and between connected devices, the IoT is the beating heart of big data and the nervous system at the centre of the supply chain. Without it, supply chain management is essentially blind.

 

“These are industries which, despite the constant chatter about optimisation, streamlining and technology, remain bloated and inefficient.” –

Finbarr Bermingham, Global Trade Review

 

For instance, end-to-end visibility is critical for ensuring delivery, increasing efficiency, and avoiding loss, spoilage, and unnecessary duplication. By harnessing the power of sensors, and enabling these sensing devices to communicate, the logistics services of the future can guarantee the kind of visibility that will allow them to stand out. But when we speak of sensors, we mean far more than RFID badges or GPS tracking for cargo containers.

 

The future of sensors is sophistication and complex information gathering. For instance, sensors embedded on pallets of perishable goods can alert you to temperature fluctuations that might damage items in transit, letting you know about an emerging problem before cargo is spoiled. Smart sensors in your trucks can tell you when they’ll need maintenance before they break down in transit.

 

And cargo containers that know when they’re open, delivery trucks that signal when they’ve been idling for unusual periods, and wearable smart badges that track the location of your delivery men in the field, can help you lower costs by ensuring that your deliveries arrive as promised.

 

Think of this as a process that begins with the IoT, moves through data collection to analysis, resulting in improved customer service. The IoT is the glue binding a process of refinement and analysis that improves the quality of your service. Smart sensors are a company’s eyes in the field, generating data about the strength of its logistics chain. This data isn’t just information about where shipments are – that’s the old way. Instead, think of the wealth of new information they provide: average idling times for delivery trucks, temperature averages and extremes in transit, and the frequencies of various problems. By analysing this data, the companies of the future will refine their service and enhance customer satisfaction.

 

“…Big data logistics can be used to optimise routing, to streamline factory functions, and to give transparency to the entire supply chain, for the benefit of both logistics and shipping companies alike.”

– Mona Lebied, Datapine

 

Maersk Line has adopted the IoT to manage its colossal fleet of refrigerated containers. By equipping each unit with connected sensors, they’re aware of problems as they happen, know precisely where the problem is, and can provide the resources necessary to fix it in real-time. UPS is also an early adopter in the industry, using smart devices to track its delivery men on urban routes, where the last mile problem is the most pressing due to issues like parking and long walks to the final destination. ‘Big Brown’ is a perfect example of how to use the IoT for analysis. As they gathered information about these deliveries, they realised the need for micro-hubs, streamlining the process and improving their bottom line.

Indeed, the savings of IoT optimisation can be enormous. As Finnbarr Bermingham reports for Global Trade Review:

Lasse Eriksson, vice-president of digitisation at Finnish company Cargotec, said that in the cargo trade, using smart devices to monitor and control vessel fuel consumption, to conduct requisite maintenance and repairs and to manage and co-ordinate the fleet correctly could save US$350,000 per vessel per year. With more than 90,000 ships currently sailing the world, that is a colossal US$32bn industry saving each year.

 

2/ ROBOTS AND AUTOMATION

 

“Robotics have been around for more than 50 years, but they have become dramatically more dynamic in the last five. They are no longer stationary, blind, expensive and unintelligent but can work alongside people and learn as jobs change.” – Paul Dittmann, executive director of the Global Supply Chain Institute

 

Robotics is revolutionising warehouses, and the future of warehouse logistics is a smart mix of humans and machines. This was a disruption that was slow in the making, as the last generation of robotics was simply to clumsy, strong, and stupid to improve warehousing. Moreover, until recently, the cost of machines exceeded the price of human labour.

 

But both concerns are falling to the new automation. Amazon, perhaps the most forward thinking company when it comes to warehouse robotics, went all-in in 2012, purchasing the robotics company, Kiva, to supply its growing need for logistical automation. Over the last three years, it’s added no less than 15,000 robots a year, quickling building to a present total of 45,000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLVCGEmkJs0

These tiny robots, just 40 centimetres tall, move in collaborative order, lifting entire shelves of stock and bringing them to their human coworkers for processing. The people stay put, working at centralised fulfillment stations; the robots do the moving, and their precision, speed, and organisation means that more items can move through a warehouse than ever before

 

Locus Robotics, building on an $8 million venture capital foundation, has developed the LocusBot, an alternative to Amazon’s system. It’s now selling these warehouse robots to clients including DHL at an estimated price of about $30,000 per robot. The LocusBots, too, work with humans – they find an item on the shelf, while people patrol allocated ‘zones’ of the warehouse, meeting the robot at the item. The human then logs the item on a robot-mounted touch screen and drops it in the LocusBot’s basket for shipping. Again, this system minimises the distances people move, relying on tireless, efficient, precise robots to do the heavy lifting.

 

“With Sawyer able to undertake a range of repetitive tasks on a variety of products, its up-and-down-scalable nature helps us fulfil e-commerce orders more efficiently.” –

Mark Parsons, Chief Customer Officer, DHL Supply Chain

 

Traditionally, automation meant powerful, dangerous equipment, demanding its own workspace, carefully separated from human beings. But a new generation of robotic coworkers – designed with collaboration in mind – are altering how warehousing works. Such ‘cobots’ are equipped with sophisticated sensors that alert them to the presence of their human partners, and they have a range of safety features that allow them to work alongside people without risking injury

 

Rethink Robotic’s Sawyer is a great example. Their first design, Baxter, took the manufacturing world by storm because of its low cost, high flexibility, and impressive safety. Sawyer is a more compact version of the same tech, and both cobots have various ways of ensuring worker safety: they operate at human speeds, sense contact and stop or slow automatically. They also have ‘force limit’, so that any contact that might occur is below a force capable of causing injury.

 

Additionally, both cobots have ‘faces’ with digital eyes that signal the cobot’s intent, telling coworkers where they plan to move next. Sawyer is a small design, ideal for warehouse packaging. Because cobots can work with people, tirelessly repeating the same task, they are ideal for packing containers, loading palettes, and shipping stock. This cobot has already been employed packing “pet food, confectionery, aerosols and canned drinks,” and the range of items that Sawyer can manipulate is essentially unlimited

 

3/ DRONES AND SELF-DRIVING SYSTEMS

 

“Right now, we’re at a point where conventional technology is already at such a high standard, there’s not much more room for improvement. As a result, companies are looking for new technologies they can use.”

– Arne Viehmeister-Kerner, MULTIROTOR

 

Drones are small, unmanned aerial vehicles. They typically use four propellers to provide lift, thrust, and control for a centralised, lightweight chassis. They’re fast, nimble, and strong, and depending on their size, they can carry significant payloads. Industry insiders like Aren ViehmeisterKerner think that the explosion in drone tech is driven by the exhaustion of capacity in logistics. With consistent double-digit growth in online shopping, for instance, logistic chains are reaching the limits of traditional tech. And improvements in materials, design, flight control, and battery life have led to these tiny workhorses to make the transition from expensive toys to cheap helpmates for industry.

 

Unsurprisingly, Amazon is leading the way here, too. Given its tremendous investment in automation, this was the next logical step for the online retail giant. In March, it unveiled its first automated delivery, four pounds of sunscreen ferried by drone to a crowd at an outdoor conference.

 

But the reality is still a few years from deployment. The US Federal Aviation Authority needs to set guidelines for drone delivery, and that won’t happen overnight. But we have a good sense of what the service will look like when it’s operational. Amazon doesn’t intend to use the drones for regular delivery; they’re an emergency option for super-fast, one hour delivery. They’ll cruise at about 90 metres at a touch more than 95 kilometres per hour, dodging birds and obstacles with automated sensors. You’ll need an Amazon landing pad for the drones to recognise from the air, and when they see it, they’ll hover, slowly descending to deliver your package before returning to base for a recharging. Realistically, you’ll need to live close to a distribution centre – the drones won’t be crossing China to make deliveries

We think drones will revolutionise the last mile problem for hard to reach customers and urgent deliveries, and as the tech improves even more, drone-ferried packages may end up being more cost effective than current methods.

 

Self-driving systems, however, are poised to transform logistics. They use sophisticated sensors, radar, and LIDAR to detect obstacles, see their position relative other objects, and steer clear of hazards. And they’ve already proven themselves more than roadworthy.

 

Freightliner developed the Highway Pilot program, leading to the licensing (in Nevada) of its first autonomous truck. Its advanced sensors and smart driving algorithms allow it to navigate roads better than a human driver can. As Antuan Goodwin reports for CNET, “The truck can steer to stay between lane markers and adjust its speed and braking to maintain a safe following distance behind other cars on the road, all while the driver is free to do other things.” The human driver, however, is still an integral part of this delivery system. He’s needed to negotiate inclement weather, interchanges and exits, and to drive surface roads and back the trailer in for deliveries. For its part, the self-driving system handles the long-haul cruising

 

If you think this is farfetched, consider that Anheuser-Busch has already put autonomous delivery into action. It unveiled its own self-driving platform powered by Otto, a subsidiary of Uber. It completed a 193-kilometre autonomous delivery run in Colorado, paving the way for self-driving systems to assist or replace professional drivers for the 450 billion kilometres per year they log in the US alone.

 

But even bigger disruptions are coming. Europe’s Maritime Unmanned Navigation through Intelligence in Networks (MUNIN) project seeks to automate ship traffic, the medium of 90 percent of the world’s goods. Fully automated ships would radically alter the calculus of maritime logistics. Ørnulf Jan Rødseth, a scientist with the MUNIN project, insists that this is “an idea that opens up entirely new possibilities in terms of new business models.You cannot underestimate how important it is.”

 

4/ 3D PRINTING

 

Major delivery players like UPS are exploring the power of 3D printing to replace delivery for a variety of goods. 3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing in which a high precision nozzle extrudes material in layers, quickly building the desired shape. These printers are small, often only slightly larger than a water cooler, and they can be installed anywhere. As the cost of this technology has continued to drop, we anticipate a shift in logistics from centralised hubs to decentralised printing stations, changing the way products are delivered to customers.

 

The idea, says Tim Gohoc, managing director of UPS Philippines, is to move to ‘zero inventory’ warehousing. The ultimate idea is to deliver goods to a consumer instantly, and have them print the item in their homes or factories.“ On-demand manufacturing allows certain goods to be transported digitally to their location before taking shape as a physical product,” he explains.

 

This instant delivery is a big sell with customers who need spare parts to continue production, for instance. With virtually no lead time, companies that leverage the power of 3D printing as part of their logistical chain can quickly corner the market on this emerging tech

 

5/ QUANTUM COMPUTING

 

Logisticians nearly always have to consider the optimal route between varying points. This sounds like a simple problem, but the number of variables induce calculations beyond the capacity of even the fastest computers. To get around this problem, software engineers are forced to take shortcuts and divide these mammoth calculations into smaller problems.

 

But the advent of quantum computing will end this, allowing computers ‘to swallow complexity whole.’ Quantum computing takes advantage of the strange properties of tiny particles. In some ways, they bend the laws of physics, allowing some very interesting advances in computing. Normal computers depend on upon standard binary – a bit can be encoded with either a 1 or a 0. But one of the strange properties at the quantum level is that quantum bits, or qubits, can be more than one thing – representing both a 1 and a 0 at the same time. This property is called quantum superposition. Moreover, and perhaps even stranger, quantum particles are linked to each other in sometimes mysterious ways, entangled in such a way that more than one qubit immediately shares information, across space. This allows the state of one qubit to depend on another, instantly. This is called quantum entanglement.

 

The combination of these two quantum properties means that quantum processing is to conventional computing as counting on your fingers is to your iPhone 7. A quantum processor can handle enormously complicated calculations, finishing a process in hours that would take even the fastest supercomputers decades to do. And while quantum processing is not better at every task than conventional processing, for logistical calculations it will unlock answers that will transform supply chain management. They’ll be able to plan routes, order supply chains, and streamline logistics to a level that has been simply unattainable with existing tech.

 

Until recently, however, the promise of quantum computing was thought to be decades from commercial application. But a first step was recently taken by D-Wave Systems, who sell a ‘quantum chip’ that’s very good at optimisation problems. Scientists don’t think that the D-Wave’s chip is truly quantum – it relies on quantum annealing – rather than the real thing, but it’s already available and solving complex problems.

 

But the real thing is almost here. IBM is developing a true quantum computer with 50 qubits of processing power, a large, expensive, unwieldy device the size of a refrigerator. They plan to sell this behemoth in the next few years, and it promises to truly revolutionise… well, everything.

 

6/ BLOCKCHAIN

 

“…This is a world premiere and a huge achievement considering the transaction involved actual physical goods being traded across borders.” – Aurélien Menant, the founder and CEO of Gatecoin

 

You’re probably familiar with Blockchain as the software undergirding Bitcoin. Blockchain can do this well because it provides a secure, diffuse, transparent system to record transactions. Here’s how it works. Information is embedded in a time-stamped block. This block is then placed between two others, forming a chain. The chain is stored on every computer running Blockchain, ensuring that there’s never an outage. Moreover, these chains are publicly accessible – guaranteeing transparency – and virtually unhackable. To alter one block, you need to hack them all.

 

But the power of Blockchain is useful for more than cryptocurrency. Because it can record any transactional information, it’s being considered for storing medical records, as it would allow physicians to see a patient’s medical history over time. This is promising a new era in patient information record keeping.

Similarly, Blockchain can do wonders for supply chain management.

By joining Blockchain to the IoT and smart contracts, it’s possible to make shipments and payments automatic and transparent, providing immediate payment when the conditions of a contract are filled. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Wells Fargo and Brighann Cotton are experimenting with an international shipment of 88 bales of cotton from the supplier in Texas to the customer in China. Using a digital smart contract and a distributed ledger system like Blockchain, they’re doing away with the paperwork and uncertainty.

 

We think this is the future of supply chain management. Forget paperwork, signatures, and labour intensive manual processing. Distributed ledger systems, smart contracts, and the IoT will enable a new era of autonomous logistical management.

 

CONCLUSION

 

We promised that the future of logistics and supply chain management would constitute a radical break from the past, and it’s clear we believe that to be true. From the data supplied by the IoT to self-driving systems, from advanced automation to Blockchain, the next decades of logistics and supply chain management will enable faster, more efficient, more precise delivery, allowing tomorrow’s companies to meet the growing needs of their customers.

An Industry in Transition

 

The Digitization of Supply and Demand

From cloud computing in supply chain management to smartphones ever-present in shoppers’ hands, the supply and demand equation is under constant pressure. Businesses now need to be able to make things happen at a far more accelerated rate. Those trying to get ahead can’t afford to be mired in the complexity of global shipping — especially when consumers expect faster fulfillment times. Case in point: A PwC survey recently showed that 88 percent of consumers are willing to pay for same-day or faster delivery.

Enterprises have had to restructure supply chains in response, making more choices available; shipping product more frequently, and in smaller batches, to more customer touch points; and holding stock in warehouses nearer to markets, among other adjustments. Supply chain management has grown more strategic out of necessity, introducing even more complexity.

Meanwhile, new political tensions in international trade have complicated sourcing decisions and customs compliance. Trade agreements are being dismantled and protectionism is growing in the forms of new tariffs and trade restrictions. All of this amounts to the potential for higher costs and more difficulty – sending up a flare for things to change.

Yet, due to its scale, complexity, and the difficulty of replacing legacy systems, the freight forwarding industry continues to be a “black box” for businesses. Not to mention a drag on the supply chain. Traditional processes have left businesses with limited visibility and insight into the status of their critical and time-sensitive shipments as they travel from origin to destination. Additionally, freight transit times are typically unpredictable, and costs can easily spiral out of control. It’s a frustrating and sometimes costly process.

 

With Data Comes Change

 

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that new logistics technologies could cut shipping and customs processing times by 16 to 28 percent.2 Businesses seeking to optimize their operations are using these technologies — along with logistics infrastructure and supply chain expertise — and seeing transformative results.

This paper will explore the emergence of digital transformation in freight forwarding. In support of that, we’ll outline how businesses successfully leverage technologies such as Sino Shipping digital platform, which creates an Operating System for Global Trade, to deliver greater visibility for everyone in the process. And, we’ll cover how organizations can enable greater agility and growth by using data and analytics to revolutionize their supply chain management.

 

The Legacy of International Trade: Complexity and Uncertainty

 

The hard reality is that legacy freight forwarding remains opaque to businesses trying to get their goods from Point A to Point B. As forwarders coordinate across as many as 15 different organizations, shipments are documented and tracked using disconnected systems, primitive data interfaces, email, spreadsheets, and even paper.

Adding to the chaotic picture, there are literally countless nonstandard documents in circulation worldwide. For instance, nearly every factory in the world uses a different format for its commercial invoice. And, when it comes to trade finance, the story can be even uglier. The end-to-end journey of a single letter of credit can involve 20-plus individuals and more than 100 pages, across 10 to 20 documents!

Not only that, much of the information is duplicated and transmitted multiple times, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).3 It’s also not uncommon for there to be related but separate streams of emails filled with unstructured data that can’t be readily shared, stored, or analyzed.

Other layers of complexity: Customs requirements vary from country to country and product to product. And, that’s happening both before shipping and at the border – sometimes involving multiple government agencies.

All of this creates opportunities for error at each leg of a shipment. The simplest details about a booking, price quote, or product in transit risk going awry, introducing mistakes and delays. Once that happens, the entire supply chain can become compromised, leaving business plans suspended, inventory stranded, working capital idle, and customer expectations dashed.

 

A Sea Change in Freight Forwarding: Transparency and Efficiency

 

Addressing today’s freight forwarding challenges relies on making use of the myriad data that already exist as part of the shipping process. Essentially, walls need to come down. The greater the transparency, the better the data – which leads to faster and more informed decision making.

But for that to happen, freight forwarding needs to embrace technology. By creating transparency in the process, unforeseen events, such as customs delays or other issues, can become collaborative opportunities. Not only that, the structured data that is captured within the platform can allow for richer analysis and better business planning.

Being able to tap into the disparate pools of critical information across the shipping ecosystem can offer many advantages. For instance, if that intelligence were available to businesses, alongside invoices, packing lists, bills of lading, and other relevant documents essential to a smooth shipping process, the entire import and export business could be completely transformed.

Recognizing this need – and the opportunity for greater efficiencies – Sino Shipping has created a cloud-based Operating System for Global Trade that utilizes an online platform and dashboards to pull in data from each party involved in the process. All documentation and key management tools are housed in one platform along with graphical presentations of the real-time location of inventory in motion, at each step of its journey. Within the platform, importers, exporters, trucking companies, ocean carriers, airlines, customs agencies, and port terminals are all connected. As a result, they’re able to access up-to-the-minute updates and alerts allowing for just-in-time adjustments to keep logistics, commercial, and customer expectations on track.

For instance, through Sino Shipping platform, products can be identified within multi-ton containers (down to the stock number or SKU). They can be efficiently consolidated, reprioritized for shipment based on market demand or inclement weather, switched from ocean to air, rerouted through fewer ports, or sent to different warehouses. Shippers can better manage operations and plan across all business units, with integration into enterprise resource planning and supply chain management systems.

By bringing importers and exporters together onto a single digital platform with the logistics companies that serve them, huge efficiencies in time and cost open up. As a result, the entire shipping and logistics process becomes, faster, less costly, and safer for all concerned.

Augmenting its technology, Sino Shipping has built extensive infrastructure through a vast network of carriers, and transport and distribution facilities. The freight forwarding firm has also hired in-house logistics, operations, and customs experts who are assigned to teams called “Squads.” Unique to Sino Shipping, as each new customer is onboarded that business is assigned a dedicated Squad that works with it to ensure every shipping experience goes smoothly, from quoting to delivery.

 

How Data Transparency Translates to Success

 

The upshot: Importers and exporters can gain better control over some of the most critical aspects of their business – from procurement, inventory, cash flow and customer relations, to customs compliance and tax planning.

That control is something that can be critical in the midst of trying to coordinate dozens of suppliers and other supply chain partners. For instance, Ridenun, a manufacturer of high-performance electric car for kids, was facing challenges managing its procurement and manufacturing timelines. With more than 100 suppliers worldwide, launch schedules and other critical interlock points were sometimes tricky to address.

“We used to have to email our forwarder for an update on a shipment, and then wait for their response,” explains Hubert, Buyer for Ridenfun. “It wasn’t in real time and it didn’t fit the speed in which we were moving.” One of the greatest benefits of centralized collaboration has been less confusion between teams. “If a shipment is delayed, instead of waiting for an update for us, our warehouse team receives an alert in real time so they update their schedules. Those time-critical notifications make a huge difference.”

In addition, the cars maker has been able to dive deeper into its supply chain. “We’ve started using Sino Shipping reporting and analytics feature to pull historical data such as landed cost per SKU and container utilization to make more strategic decisions,” says Jensen.

Reporting and analytics are not just nice-to-haves. In a competitive environment, they can have a notable impact on the balance sheet. For Mobalpa, a 100-year-old leading wholesale producer of kitchen and restaurant ware, legacy systems created obstacles in managing in-transit inventory and measuring total product cost. By digitally transforming its processes, it was able to introduce greater visibility and real-time notifications that helped it assess the financial health of its supply chain. As a result, it reduced stock-outs by 10 percent.

For companies sourcing and manufacturing globally, predictability and reliability are also important factors — especially when trying to manage the supply chain of a company dedicated to environmental concerns and sustainable business practices. As a leading producer of BPA-free reusable bottles, cups, and canisters, Nicolas Wang wanted a way to monitor and manage environmental impacts of its supply chain. With headquarters in Boston, USA, and manufacturing in Shenzhen, the company needed greater visibility and access to reliable data.

Working with Sino Shipping, Nicolas was able to manage the entire supply chain from one centralized place while creating better linkages with teams across its organization. And, Sino Shipping data — along with the expertise of the Sino Shipping Squad assigned to Nicolas— meant easier and smarter decision making. “Sino Shipping helps us to plan better, and strategize to avoid air shipments whenever possible. That control makes all the difference in the world,” notes Senior Supply Chain Manager Claude Fossat.

By adopting the Sino Shipping platform, Nicolas not only shaved off 8 hours per week of back and forth communications with freight forwarders, it also reduced annual air shipments by 66 percent — delivering greater cost efficiency and reduced environmental impact. In the process, Nicolas estimates that it saved 207 tons of CO2 emissions. Says Claude, “Our bottom line is about more than just profit. Sino Shipping gives us the ability to make hard trade-offs, and hold ourselves accountable. It helps us walk the walk in terms of sustainability.

 

The New Way Forward

Much of the world has gone from an old economy to a digital economy; but the supply chain hasn’t kept up. Consumers were once fine with a three-week delivery window, but now they’re in control and want their goods in days (or even hours). Businesses can’t manage a new economy supply chain by email and spreadsheets, yet that’s still the standard in freight forwarding.

Sino Shipping unique combination of technology, infrastructure, and inperson expertise has ushered in a new way of working in the freight forwarding industry. The Operating System for Global Trade gives businesses more visibility and control over their inventory in motion and historical shipping data than ever before – allowing them to better match supply and demand, reducing working capital, enabling greater business agility, and helping drive growth.