St. Patrick’s Day is a significant celebration globally and is inseparable from alcohol, together with the beer industry seeing a number of the greatest buy increases. For big corporations, this entails simple adjustments to supply chain technology to make larger raw material purchases.
Guinness, a moderate-size brewery in contrast to other top suppliers, sees one of the biggest gains in sales within the beer industry. The business experiences nearly 819% growth in the weeks leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, because demand increases from bars and restaurants ordering large amounts of beer for the party.
Despite Guinness’s mid-sized operation, the company has no trouble pumping out particular requests as part of their 1,883,200,000 pints of beer that they produce each season — 13 million of which can be consumed on St. Patrick’s Day.
The answer is enterprise resource planning (ERP). The technology emerged in the 1990s, making supply chain management easier. Regardless of the magnitude of the company, ERP and cloud computing options have allowed businesses of all sizes to plan satisfactorily with nominal digital resources.
The supply chain technology industry has seen many advances in recent years. Let’s take a look at the beverage industry status quo, what is going to change in the market and how sophisticated software will get us there.
The beverage industry is particularly reliant on supply chain technology. This is because holidays such as St. Patrick’s Day and other occasions make the required supply amounts ebb and flow. It would not be possible for people to take every factor into account in regards to just how much supply should be made at a given time.
Traditionally, the distribution chain was for the production of beverages. No more is that the process focused solely on drink manufacturing, but it also takes into account transportation, supply and other aspects that historically required people to compute or estimate.
The modern beverage industry demands intentional control of the supply chain. To remain competitive, companies need to maintain lean budgets, meaning that no excess products should be arranged. However, under-ordering creates an equally debatable matter.
With a hyper-competitive small business environment, the drink sector faces many challenges caused by supply management issues. These include logistics and transportation issues that must be incorporated into ERP systems, sourcing technologies that find high-quality goods at the best prices possible and sometimes lacking good stock management tools.
Best practices when evaluating supply chain technology
Due to the sensitive nature of the distribution chain, the food and beverage industry can’t overlook the significance of finding the right supply chain technology the first time. Below are a few best practices to follow when searching out such applications.
First, ensure the software you are considering is pertinent to your industry. While some of those off-the-shelf industrial options are the most heavily driven, they’re also the most generic ERP software bundles. Whatever option you choose should have the ability to integrate with the current software you use, unless you’re planning a total overhaul.
Integration is a key element because it addresses important problems, such as the silent creation of data silos, that may fill up your drives with information that won’t ever be used. It should also fully integrate with almost any logistics and transportation software you use; otherwise, you can go sometime before realizing that distributors have yet to be notified of impending shipments. Taking into account your holistic needs will pay dividends later on, so start looking for an all-purpose solution.
Bear in mind, the objective of most businesses is to grow! That is why it’s important to ensure whatever solution you choose is scalable. If you discover that off-the-shelf alternatives just don’t cut it, you’ll find custom software solutions available as well.
Supply chains of the future
In the future, supply chain technologies will look, feel and operate in a vastly different way than it does today. Here are some key places where we hope to find change:
Blockchain
We expect to observe a rise in the use of blockchain options for transactions in the beverage industry. That is an unprecedented switch from conventional banking systems. This system will make all transactions publicly traceable to boost billing transparency, and reevaluate the flow of capital and ensure security.
As in many businesses, using AI and predictive analytics will probably skyrocket. It can save a significant amount of money for businesses by utilizing historic data to predict when specific supplies should be arranged. It can also detect when costs for certain supplies are likely to be the lowest, minimizing the overall cost of production.
Internet of Things (IoT)
IoT enables an increasing number of smart and RFID-tagged (radio-frequency identification) items to be interconnected, providing valuable data at each turn. As the kind and range of smart devices continue to become more diverse, we expect to find these devices become critical players on the market.
By way of example, trucking companies have utilized IoT GPS speed screens to make sure their truckers are driving safe and optimized channels. However, when applied to the whole supply chain, there are infinite IoT chances.
Cloud computing
As more cloud electricity becomes less costly, cloud computing systems will likely be a major element on the market. Firms will have a high degree of autonomy, as they can “lease” cloud hours to carry out computationally expensive jobs. These can be hooked into mobile applications, allowing high-power logic to be performed on the go.
Supply chain management technology is continually being uprooted by new business trends. Though it’s particularly pertinent to those in the drink business, all businesses that rely on production need to be informed of the latest developments in this kind of technology to maximize themselves going forward. Now is a perfect chance for a business to establish itself as an innovator on top of the chain instead of just a different link that follows.
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