The Digital Supply Chain Challenge

Chapter 1 – Separating Hype from Reality

a revision of the expectation that the supply chain ends with getting products on store shelves. Consumers are ever-more demanding in their expectations, and e-commerce players are rushing to meet them. For companies deciding to what extent they can compete with Amazon or Walmart.com, supply chain managers need to enter the discussion clear-eyed about the potential impacts on their cost to serve. The supply chain cost dynamics of e-commerce are discussed in the fourth section – “The Emerging E-commerce Inflection Point.” Topic 5: Maybe we have been here before A new emerging technology is going to revolutionize supply chains forever. It will improve traceability, limit fraud and waste, and provide instant visibility for all the actors from end to end. This is the promise we are hearing of blockchain. For those supply chain managers who have been around for a while, this may seem familiar. It has echoes of another revolutionary technology that entered the mainstream in the mid-2000s – radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. There is a curious if incomplete analogy between the excitement surrounding blockchain and the buzz around RFID. The arc of the RFID story and where it sits today can offer insights into how new technologies can find their “sweet spot” and contribute to more efficient and high-performing supply chains, even if they do not live up to their initial expectations. The story of RFID, and the analogy to blockchain, is told in the final section – “RFID: Yesterday’s Blockchain.”

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