The supply chain is regarded to be the beating heart of any business. So one may determine how essential its correct operation is to its stakeholders. Recent disturbances, such as Covid-19 or the Ukraine-Russia war. These interruptions will influence the supply chain worldwide, so don’t expect your skin to be spared. God forbid how many more stumbles are yet to come. So the supply chain needs a modern tech captain to help navigate such a crisis. Our CIOs can play the role of such leaders.
CIOs are now expected to do more than manage IT to deliver business value through AI/ML. It’s high time to consider that supply chains are more than just assuring last-mile delivery and logistics, just as CIOs are more than just managing help desks.
Gartner predicts that by 2025, every supply chain will utilize AI and data science.
CIOs must be strategic business leaders. Therefore, controlling the supply chain is critical for procuring raw materials, manufacturing, and delivering products while simultaneously mitigating the risks of operational disruptions, including cyberattacks.
Everyone knows the massive losses caused by the ship blocking the Suez Canal, which is believed to be $10 billion daily. Aside from such interruptions, a supply chain faces another stumbling block: data breaches. Occurring now and then and leaving organizations vulnerable to many malware attacks
By wearing two hats, our CIOs will be the new stewards of business and technology. They must fulfill both IT and supply chain requirements.
Three focus areas will enhance supply chain functioning.
1)Transparency: Mitigating risks with restricted visibility is difficult since it will never provide a clear vision of an entire SC, preventing one from making preemptive decisions. AI, a pervasive technology, may assist enterprises in shifting from reactive to proactive behavior. Visibility and flexibility are possible when your organization is data-centric.CIO must have a proper data strategy with a joint center for all, moving away from the siloed data structure.
Today, historical data is insufficient for accurate prediction. Dynamic data from partners, external sources, and IoT devices determine where items are in real-time and in full view worldwide. The insights from each granular data point aid in predicting and responding to future disturbances.
According to a survey, a major energy firm improved its operational performance merely by leveraging AI/ML and establishing a strategy to improve visibility. This allows it to better forecast weaknesses such as unforeseen incidents, supplier exits, or other bottlenecks. The business successfully cut the time needed to generate production plans from hours to minutes.
2)Maintaining security and integrity of the Supply chain:
According to Pillsbury, cybersecurity-related AI investment would grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24% through 2027, reaching a market value of $46 billion.
Supply chains are intertwined networks that play a vital role in the global business operations of any organization. It is the backbone of the global economy. So you can see how important it is for information officers to address vulnerabilities from this observation. The plethora of risk factors put it at the top of the information chiefs’ priority list.
Supply chains are as much about the flow of information as it’s about the flow of goods and services. This network and data are only as safe as the security measures implemented by the partners or third parties that have access to it. To maintain data integrity inside SC, all entities in the supply chain must implement comprehensive and coordinated security measures.
ML-powered monitoring tools may be used to detect changes caused by malicious activity, providing information about the source of the change and what can be done to resolve the issue by finding flaws and inefficiencies. Cybersecurity has always been a problem, but what is more concerning is its increasing complexity. Because of the intricacy, the attack can go on for months before anybody notices.
One such assault was carried out by Russian hackers, who used an accounting firm to distribute malware to other machines globally, harming businesses, organizations, and individuals worldwide through update processes. It forced Ukraine’s banks to incur massive losses. One of the world’s greatest shipping corporations suffered when its supply chain was entirely interrupted. As a result, its on-time delivery schedule suffered greatly. This company was in charge of tens of millions of tonnes of cargo through more than 70 ports, with an estimated 800 containers. This attack brought the 5th of the entire shipping capacity to a halt. It demonstrates the sophistication of cybercriminals’ approaches, which may be countered by employing AI/ML. Machine learning is already recognizing and prioritizing risks and, in certain situations, taking automated measures to swiftly repair security vulnerabilities at scale.
According to Deep Instinct’s director of cybersecurity advocacy, “legacy, signature-based tech is successful at blocking only 30-60%.” ML, on the other hand, increases efficacy to 80-92%.
3:Safeguarding product integrity: What is more crucial for any business is to preserve a customer’s trust by demonstrating and maintaining the quality of your product or service. Brand value exists once buyers trust your goods. To safeguard organizations’ and consumers’ confidence, information officers must ensure the integrity of their goods across the whole supply chain. To resist vulnerability from all perspectives, it is necessary to use technology and invest appropriate efforts and resources. If supply chain security is not prioritized, counterfeit items will continue to enter the genuine market, undermining consumer trust, brand owners’ profits, and quality of life.
To recognize fakes, big corporations employ computer vision. To discover details, data scientists employ ML algorithms. These qualities distinguish genuine from the counterfeit. Two things may appear similar to a human observer. Still, ML systems have defeated humans because a deep learning algorithm detects minute features that depart from the original and identifies them as fake.
Many big brands, like Huawei, Samsung, Swarovski, and others, work with Alibaba to keep counterfeits off their shelves.
A Way Forward:
In this digital age,
“it has become visible that businesses without a technology platform may stumble. Our CIOs are the torch bearers for adopting technology—AI/ML—giving them the edge to become business drivers” –Tweet this
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