The future is digital: explore how the most influential trends in the digital world are shaping supply chains with Dr. Leonard Lane, Advisor to the Group Chairman of Li & Fung Ltd. Through the story of how Li & Fung, Hong Kong-based supply chain manager, kicked off their digitization strategy, learn the driving attributes of future supply chains, how demographic and economic shifts have affected the market, the growing influence of sustainability, and more.
What You'll Learn
How the growing accessibility of information affects consumers
The driving attributes of future supply chains: flexibility, speed to market, visibility, and sustainability
Global megatrends that shape supply chains
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- UCI Strategy Professor, Member of the Board Fung Academy and Advisor to the Group Chairman Li & Fung Ltd. Three-time Ironman Finisher.
Retail is changing fast, and supply chains need to adapt to the new reality. The internet gives consumers instant access to information about trends, pricing, and corporate practices. Digital retailers like Amazon raise customer expectations around speed of delivery and personalization. To meet these new demands, supply chains need to become faster, more flexible, more transparent, and more sustainable. New products need to be brought market almost as quickly as consumers can conceive of them. This requires flexibility at every link in the chain — the ability to pivot and reconfigure our processes radically and on demand. Transparency is part of this; the consumer and our teams internally need to know what’s happening at every step. We need to be open to feedback and adaptable. And this new transparency holds us to the highest ethical standards in terms of the sustainability of our sourcing and processes.
Supply chains have adapted to a digitized world driven by an exponential increase in computing power, but what are the other trends affecting these chains? Since the late 1970s, a growing middle class in Asia has changed the way supply chains have optimized to include a globalization of consumption as well as a globalization of production. Now that goods are being consumed in the East as well as produced there, supply chains must adapt. Learn about these demographic and economic shifts, the changing face of retail, the unprecedented advertising specificity due to new technology and data, and the advantage of sustainability.