Gartner, Inc. has announced the winners of its Power of the Profession Supply Chain Awards. The awards are community-selected recognitions of the most innovative supply chain initiatives of the year.
“Gartner’s Power of the Profession Award winners show that supply chain organizations are continuously innovating – even in times of ongoing disruption,” said Eric O’Daffer, vice president analyst with the Gartner Supply Chain practice. “They also show that innovation is intentional and built systematically over a period of time as part of the overall strategy.”
There were four award categories, highlighting technology or process innovation, customer or patient innovation, social impact and people breakthroughs, and one award for the best submission overall.
Supply Chain Breakthrough of the Year: Pfizer wins the overall award, which celebrates the initiative that drives a breakthrough innovation for customers, the business, and the lasting benefit of society. Pfizer won this award with its submission for Customer or Patient Innovation of the Year: “Deep Freezing the Supply Chain to Bring COVID-19 Vaccine to the World.”
As Pfizer and BioNTech developed an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, they faced the challenges of storing the vaccine at minus 75 degrees Celsius and delivering the doses to their customers. Pfizer developed a new shipper box with reusable packaging that was suited for shipping the vaccine from ultralow temperature freezers to vaccine distribution centers’ cold storage worldwide. This required moving the product across multiple supply chain partners in record time with complete, accurate and real-time visibility on location and quality characteristics of every dose. The shipper box kept the product at a stable temperature for 10 days. A new type of data logger allowed for real-time tracking of location, temperature and humidity. These efforts enabled Pfizer to continuously deliver at 99.998% on-time to date.
Process or Technology Innovation of The Year: Schneider Electric for its submission “Adaptive Machine Learning Driver ‘Self-Healing’ Supply Chain.”
Schneider’s supply chain consists of numerous business functions, applications, master data parameters and order lines. That’s why it developed a self-healing digital supply chain platform, driven by adaptive machine learning (ML) to optimize performance-related parameters such as safety stock quantity, minimum order quantities and lead times on a real-time basis. This has resulted in savings of more than €100 million.
People Breakthrough of the Year: Shell for its submission “Using Smartwatches to Improve Employee Safety.”
Shell Brazil has tested a feature of a smartwatch that’s capable of predicting accidents. The feature measures and predicts fatigue and interacts with users. The technology provides the ability to monitor workers on site, which can lead to valuable determinations around repetitive movements and systemic issues in processes, ultimately leading to a safer workplace. It’s a nontraditional use of technology to substantially benefit people, specifically in the supply chain.
Social Impact of the Year: Microsoft for its submission “Circularity at Scale — A Zero Waste Plan for Every Part.”
Circularity enables Microsoft’s sustainability goals by creating regenerative and restorative cycles for everything it produces. The company’s Circular Centers aim to achieve circularity at scale with a zero waste plan for every part. Over the past year, the Circular Center model has achieved 83% reuse and 17% recycle of critical parts while reducing carbon emissions by 145,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Note: The identification of a Gartner award winner or finalist is not an endorsement by Gartner of any vendor, product or service.
Gartner clients can read more in “Supply Chain Executive Report: Power of the Profession Supply Chain Awards” and “Supply Chain Brief: Power of the Profession Winners Recognize Convergence of Process, Technology”.
A complimentary webinar is available here. Non-Gartner clients find further information here.