Always faster, always more. An irreversible trend.

Ever faster development cycles, more and more formats and distribution channels continue to determine the daily work in marketing, creative agencies and publishing houses as well as in many other team organizations. And while phrases such as “digital transformation” and “efficient collaboration” were the top buzzwords yesterday, today it’s “Artificial Intelligence”. AI creates images, writes stories in any language, summarizes texts, lets voices speak at will and even entire videos are possible. All thanks to the right prompt.

Regardless of ethical issues or the data basis on which AI was trained, it appears to be radically transforming many areas of work and automating manual tasks. Of course, the question of process control also remains and is unlikely to become less complex. And, let’s not kid ourselves, AI can create content in a matter of seconds. So if the growth in data “before” AI had not already been enormous, it is now getting another incredible boost.

The digital universe is not unlike the physical universe in that they are both vast. In 2013, it was estimated to contain around the same number of digital bits as there are stars in the universe. The source of this figure was an EMC study conducted with the IDC and published in May 2014 called “The Digital Universe”. And it is growing fast with all the data we generate and copy.

According to IDC and Huawai, the overall amount of data generated is expected to reach 572 zettabytes by 2030. And while the share of enterprise content is 47 exabytes today, it will reach 155 exabytes by 2026. And this growth will continue and accelerate in the years to come.

Chart a new course to success

So what can companies and organizations do to tackle this problem and successfully reorganize themselves? Thinking outside the box leads to the solution, as the manufacturing industry and retail supply chains basically have similar problems: a huge variety of materials and products, complex production and delivery processes, many internal and external stakeholders and, last but not least, various connected systems. These problems are successfully solved with “Supply Chain Management” (SCM). The notion of end-to-end control over workflows that incorporate automated processes has been tremendously successful.

SCM is shorthand for the planning and management of all supply and logistics tasks, from selecting suppliers to procuring, manufacturing, and delivering goods. It is the tool used to coordinate collaboration among all the players, suppliers, merchants, logistics service providers and customers. SCM integrates management within the confines of an enterprise and beyond its boundaries.

An inspiring strategy: Supply Chain Management (SCM)

The roots of supply chain management date back at least to the 1980s when an early precursor to SCM concepts called just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing and its cousin, the just-in-sequence (JIS) inventory strategy, emerged. The idea behind JIT was to closely coordinate manufacturers and suppliers’ processes, which required major adjustments to the value chain.

Processes had to be linked so suppliers could track the materials consumed by manufacturers. They had to be made more flexible yet also more stable with an eye to improving quality. Shipping processes and cargo carriers had to standardized, for example, with uniform container systems and truck swap bodies. The Japanese concept of Kanban, or the pull principle, was instrumental in making all this work.