On Demand News: 05/03/18

Gartner Supply Chain Conference: Top Trends

03 May, 2018 // On May 14, industry analyst firm Gartner will gather our industry’s best and brightest for its annual Supply Chain Executive Conference in Arizona. Morgan will be there, and below are some of the topics we’ll be interested to explore.

If you’re going to Gartner, let’s meet up and share the learning. Of course, we’d also love to learn more about your own organization’s challenges and see if Morgan can help.

Let’s Get Digital

Digital supply chains are the talk of the conference, whether it’s case studies, pitches from software vendors or Gartner’s own maturity maps and best practices. We’re eager to move past the hype and to see how digitization can function as an element of larger business process transformations. Some sessions that caught our eye:

- High-tech Manufacturers Realizing Value from Digital Vision with Gartner analyst Michael Burkett. Our experience is that the short product lifecycles, high variability and expensive goods in high tech make it a Ground Zero for optimization opportunities.

- New Tech for High Tech: AI and Blockchain in Manufacturing If you’re like us, you’re pretty saturated by folks who throw the terms “blockchain” and “AI” around—often without understanding the right use cases to drive real value. IBM has invested to be at the forefront of these trends, and VP Ron Castro should have some real, practical insights.

- New Applied Now—Next Gen Supply Chains Driving Growth and Differentiation Mo Hajibashi of Accenture will share lessons learned from Dow Chemical, HP Enterprise and Johnson & Johnson. Should be good.

- Next Generation Collaboration At the end of the digitization rainbow, there’s a pot of collaboration gold to be had. We have written about collaboration in this space recently, but it represents a tougher challenge than ever in global, outsourced supply chains.

- Using Metrics in S&OP Maybe not the sexiest topic at the conference, but all the digitization in the world won’t help if you don’t measure the right stuff. Gartner analyst Debra Hofman promises to share specific tips and examples.

Supply Chain’s Highway to Healthcare Efficiency

This year’s conference has a rich set of healthcare discussions. We work in the area with leading medical device, life science and healthcare clients, so we know the potential for gains.

- Gartner’s Framework for Logistics Excellence to Win the Healthcare Sector We’re expecting a good overview of current trends and innovations from Gartner analyst James Lisa

- Improve Value from Healthcare Analytics Initiatives: Today and In the Future Sign us up for this discussion on how the right end-to-end metrics can improve decision-making.

- The Digital Life Science Supply Chain Life sciences are another perfect storm of great elements for digitization with high product values, environmental shipping considerations and complex supply chains.