2022 is known as the "first year of supply chain value", the epidemic highlights the importance of supply chains, and the demand and awareness of industry and the public has reached an unprecedented height. The smooth stability and reliability of supply chain have attracted the attention of all parties. Spot trading venues, mass supply chain service enterprises, e-commerce platforms, etc., are improving their supply chain management level through intelligent transformation, forging the overall resilience of the supply chain to cope with the unpredictable changes of The Times.

In the past year, the global supply chain has been moving forward with great changes and pandemics, but the trends point to more uncertainty in global supply chain management extending into 2023, whether it is existing or new geopolitical conflicts, inflationary pressures and recessionary environments, climate change weather events or other issues that have not yet emerged. As the shadow of the pandemic fades, 2023 will usher in a new dawn, and there will be some key supply chain trends that will need to be managed to seize strategic opportunities in the crisis.

2023 Supply Chain Trends: Visualization, Collaboration, Sustainability

1. The importance of supply chain management continues to increase

With the convening of the "twenty", "supply chain security" for the first time to the level of the macro national security system, and then to the National Development and Reform Commission said that 2023 will strengthen the important industrial chain supply chain security and stability risk monitoring and early warning, supply chain security has risen to an unprecedented height.

on January 1, 2023, the Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chain (hereinafter referred to as the Supply Chain Act) came into force in Germany. Supply chain management, especially supply chain social responsibility management or due diligence management/due diligence, will directly affect the participation of enterprises in global value chains and affect the competitiveness of enterprises.

From an international perspective, if Chinese enterprises want to cooperate with multinational companies, they need to respond to the supply chain due diligence of multinational companies and implement various requirements of the other side. For many domestic enterprises in the key control point of the global industrial chain, the social responsibility requirements are constantly increasing, on the one hand, they should bear the social responsibility as suppliers of European and American enterprises, and on the other hand, they should have the due diligence responsibility for their own suppliers.

From the domestic point of view, supply chain management is related to the security and stability of the industrial chain and supply chain. After the epidemic, many enterprises have difficulties in operation, and many problems are caused by supply chain disruptions. Enterprises need to better understand their suppliers, grasp supplier information and control costs through supply chain management; At the same time, it is also necessary to strengthen the risk assessment and control of suppliers, pass on the requirements of social responsibility layer by layer, do a good job of due management, and jointly deal with various uncertain risks with suppliers to enhance competitiveness.

2. Transparent supply chain helps enterprises predict and mitigate risks

In a world that is becoming more volatile and unpredictable, supply chains are in constant danger of disruption. Companies cannot control the weather, political outcomes or the consequences of unprecedented outbreaks, but they can determine how their supply chains respond to these challenges. For example, if the region from which the raw material comes is politically unstable, the company can obtain the raw material from another region. If that changes, businesses can adjust immediately and mitigate the impact of disruption. Strategies that anticipate bottlenecks and plan ahead can help companies minimize the risk of supply chain disruptions.

Transparency and visibility, or the ability to trace components or goods from the manufacturer to subsequent processing facilities or end users, are the most critical elements of supply chain management. In order to strengthen the entire supply chain, more visibility enables a better understanding of the overall state of the supply chain and the state of each link. In addition, visibility guarantees that all stakeholders, including customers and internal parties, have easy access to the data. If the supply chain is more transparent, many potential risks, such as delivery delays due to order errors, can be reduced and bottlenecks can be addressed more quickly.

3, low carbon will become an important area of corporate responsibility

The proposal of the "dual carbon" goal accelerates the low-carbon transformation of Chinese enterprises, and the low-carbon requirements of European and American countries are gradually increased, such as the EU carbon border adjustment mechanism, which promotes the low-carbon economy to become a new territory of global competition. Whether operating at home or exporting to the EU, further carbon reduction efforts are needed.

Many financial institutions also focus their ESG investment on low-carbon areas, or combine carbon reduction with financing, further promoting the importance of carbon reduction.

In addition to reducing their own carbon emissions through technological innovation, energy transformation and other methods, enterprises also need to pay attention to carbon reduction in the supply chain. In addition to doing a good job of real carbon reduction, the importance of carbon information disclosure is also increasing.

With the requirements of the country and enterprises for carbon neutrality goals, suppliers that have not built a complete carbon management system will gradually be eliminated in the process of industrial upgrading. Enterprises have strong impetus from inside and outside to improve the carbon management system, which will further accelerate the carbon reduction process of the upstream and downstream of the supply chain.

2023 Supply chain 9 keywords

Close to consumers

It is foreseeable that the market environment in 2023 will not calm down, but will carry out the volatility to the end.

In order to better respond to the changing environment, supply chain management should be closer than ever to the consumer, closer to the end of demand and use the data associated with it to reduce the impact of market volatility on the business to benefit.

Extended supply network

While close to consumers, 2023 enterprises also need to break the shackles of the traditional supply chain "linear", from the customer's customer to the supplier's supplier, to make full use of all possibilities in the extended supply network, to strengthen the agile flexibility of the supply chain while reducing the total cost of service, and a clear insight into the market situation, to ensure stable business growth.

Agility

In 2023, when agility has become an irreversible trend in the development of the supply chain, the market is expected to gradually recover in the case of high volatility and uncertainty, and agility will naturally become one of the main measures of enterprise supply chain value. Supply chain agility is also the core competence foundation of building active supply chain and adaptive supply chain.

Supply chain resilience

In the New Year, supply chain resilience will be one of the dimensions that enterprises need to pay most attention to in the supply chain field. Strong enough resilience means that when an enterprise can quickly adapt to the impact of changes in external factors, it can ensure the stable operation of its own supply network. In 2023, when the market environment is still changing, supply chain resilience will undoubtedly become an important supporting force for enterprises to achieve sustainable benefits and long-term management.

Value data

The data precipitated in the process of supply chain management is a huge help to enterprises to make predictions and decisions. Especially in the current period when the total amount of social data continues to explode, any data may help enterprises obtain more "certainty" in a world full of uncertainty. Adhering to the data-driven concept and improving the availability of data will continue to be the key for enterprises to enhance their supply chain capabilities.

Digital generation

In 2023, based on taking full advantage of all the possibilities in the extended supply network, the digital Li Li model of the supply chain built using low-latency data will be chosen by more enterprises to combat market uncertainty.

In the digital Clonodynamic model, enterprises can try and discuss various uncertainty questions without risk, and obtain highly valuable answers, significantly improving the accuracy and efficiency of supply chain decisions at all levels from strategy to execution.

Decision consistency

In the face of the still challenging 2023, whether enterprises can achieve commercial success depends largely on the following two points: Is there consistency in supply chain horizontal and vertical decisions? Do you have a solution that aligns with your current strategic goals and status quo and supports it on an ongoing basis?

With the integrated business planning platform, the company's strategy is transformed into an actionable option and concretized into data, and the optimal solution is formulated to fit the strategy at all times, so as to create a unified and efficient supply chain system with significant cost reduction and efficiency.

standardization

There is no doubt that standardization can reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of the enterprise supply chain system. Building a top-down standardized supply chain system is always one of the important issues in the field of supply chain management.

But the standardised "right answer" varies from company to company, even in the same industry, and even if the business is of similar size. How to establish a unified and efficient standardized supply chain system that conforms to its own characteristics? This will be a must for enterprise supply chain in 2023.

Power of technology

Today, to effectively reduce the impact of high volatility and uncertainty, companies need to have the ability to forecast at scale, process massive amounts of data, and manage complex supply networks. The realization of these capabilities, with the support of technology such as AI, and with the help of a "high-tech force" system to complete those tasks that cannot be completed by traditional means is the trend of the future.

The digital era of supply chain management will be further opened in 2023.