Supply chains and logistics have seen massive disruptions as a result of COVID-19, creating new challenges for retail and manufacturing operations worldwide. Material Handling and Logistics (Nov. 12, 2020) identifies how sensors can be used to improve and modernize logistics to shore up global supply chain infrastructures.
There are 4 critical points in the logistics process – point of origin, warehousing, transit, and destination – each with a unique set of challenges that impact the efficiency of supply chains, sometimes even leading to complete breakdowns. Things that go wrong in the logistics process include pilfering, asset misplacement, and physical damage due to improper storage conditions and unexpected events.
These challenges will be exacerbated as vaccines become available for COVID-19. Ensuring the right goods are transported in the right quantities, under the right conditions, and delivered to the right place at the right time, will allow society to remain functional to fight the pandemic.
Fortunately, sensors can alert companies to these problems and help them address these issues, sometimes even before they become a problem. IoT sensing solutions are the most promising, as they enhance data visibility and transparency across the entire process and facilitate planning, optimizing, and uncovering other invisible insights.
They can be used to monitor environmental conditions, prevent misplacement, identify damages, avoid accidents, ensure compliance, track location, and reveal real-time conditions. Even without network connections, sensors can still reveal the logistics history of a process, helping to identify events that might have compromised goods. Today, sensing solutions are fragmented, with no standardized solutions available to span the entire logistics journey. Nonetheless, sensors play a critical role in enabling information transparency to facilitate planning, optimization, and risk management in the supply chain.
Classroom discussion questions:
- What is IoT and why is it an important OM tool?
- What are the complications faced in bringing COVID-19 vaccines to consumers?