Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Supply Chains (Guest Post by Wolfgang Lehmacher, Forum)

My guest post today comes from Wolfgang Lehmacher, who presents a white paper prepared by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with BVL International.

The report, titled Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Supply Chains, provides preliminary considerations for Fourth Industrial Revolution-driven supply chains. Based on the impact on supply chains of advanced technologies, in particular the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, enterprise wearables and additive manufacturing, the report highlights seven areas of focus for business and government: new roles and responsibilities, supply chain performance, agile organizations, ecosystem for skilling, support for SMEs, leadership and neutral platforms. The Fourth Industrial Revolution changes the way in which we produce and manage the supply chain, and paves the way for the creation of new value chains. The following developments are expected to play a major role in this process going forward: Open innovation, i.e. greater openness of companies towards involving both other companies and their customers in innovation and development processes, distributed manufacturing as an approach to the comprehensive decentralization of production structures and the elimination of classic manufacturing paradigms, and new collaboration models between companies, primarily horizontally, but also vertically.

Wolfgang Lehmacher is Head of Supply Chain and Transport Industries at the World Economic Forum. During his career he was Partner and Managing Director (China and India) at the global strategy firm CVA and President and CEO of GeoPost Intercontinental. He is member of the IATA Air Cargo Innovation Awards Jury and the Logistikweisen, a think tank under the patronage of the German Federal Ministry BMVI. He is FT, Forbes, Fortune, BI contributor and author of books, including The Global Supply Chain – 2017 and How Logistics Shapes Our Lives – 2013 (German).