"Technology will identify when a decision must be made, and it  will help us to screen the decisions. It will also help us to track the quality of decisions."

“Technology will allow us to use more data, to become more automated - even autonomous when the situation allows - and leverage our human intelligence for decisions that cannot just flow through automatically.”

“We will have fewer static cycles (quarterly, monthly, etc.) and move to a position where decisions can be made whenever, wherever they are needed: moving towards continuous decision making.”

“Supply chain planners will have to work differently. They will need to learn much more on how they can model the supply chain: the setups, the constraints, the dependencies; how they can model the business priorities: which customer is more important? Which products are more important?”

“This will also affect skills: the organizational setup will need to have even more network-oriented end-to-end (E2E) planners with a very good understanding of technologies and how they work.”

“The goal of visibility is to collect the data, make sure that data quality is good and then create the insights based on the data that drives value for the organization.”

“Visibility is a journey filled with multiple challenges, but with great rewards.”

“The key to success is building a data foundation, providing data-driven insights as a basis for smart decision making at various levels of granularity and time horizons, combined with intelligence and automation.”

“Predictive analytics allow companies to get forward looking insights into their shipments, which can be shared with their customers and partners.”

“Real-time visibility is the first true collaborative transportation solution that connects shippers, 3PLS, carriers, private fleets, suppliers and customers. Not only does it connect the different parties, but it also provides each stakeholder with its own benefit.”

“2021’s trends for smart manufacturing fall within two concepts: There’s the connected worker which integrates associates and their surroundings to improve interactions and decisions while creating and spreading knowledge; then there’s smart factories that combine various technologies to improve the reliability of supply.”

“Hyperautomation is the notion that anything can be automated. It is a reflection of pent-up demand for operational resilience that has come to the fore in the past 18 months and makes hyperauomation an irreversible trend.”

“Autonomous things create a symbiotic environment where machines and humans work together collaboratively, not just as a building block of the smart factory. It also reaches into how operational decisions are made and who is responsible for them.”

“Multiexperience will impact how factory workers can control and manage their interactions in both physical and virtual settings.”

“Edge computing complements cloud computing through a distributed ecosystem of sensors, gateways and other devices. It seeks to leverage increasing populations of sensors and devices to gain insight across ecosystems or factories.”

“Democratization is a behavioral trend that focuses on the universal access to data and technology and know-how. It is essential to continuous improvement; key to building flexibility in factories which in turn supports agility across supply networks.”