Demand forecasting is a staple of supply chain management. Everyone’s doing it in one way or another to create realistic production plans and inventory turnover projections. Most supply chain leaders rely on a mixture of historical transactional data, direct customer insight and market behaviors. What are the best tools and techniques that play a vital role in forecasting and predicting market behaviors? Stephan Gotthardt, SVP Europe Supply Chain at Teva Pharmaceuticals will be sharing his insights into how he is doing this at Teva and the challenges that have come with this.

Here, the two-dimensional performance management is composed of efficiency and effectiveness that serve as a valid basis. However, balancing these factors in other to achieve supply chain optimization appears to be the cause for potential complications and challenges for many organizations.

Agility and resilience have become foundational cornerstones of demand-driven end-to-end supply chains. Across many industries, supply chains have traditionally been informed by historical data and relationships. As sudden shocks to supply chains have become more frequent, gaps in real-time data processes and systems have been exposed and such disruptions give renewed importance to an organisation’s need to adapt and keep pace with improving technology and evolving consumer demands. For companies to empower today’s agility and tomorrow’s resilience, they must re-imagine the capabilities required to plan, adjust, and fill the gaps in an ever-changing environment. Truly forward-thinking organizations will have to integrate. collaborate and optimize tech in a bid to create smarter supply chains.

Key points for discussion include:
•How can organizations identify gaps within their supply chain framework?
•Can a supply chain digital twin make you twice as agile?
•What technologies can assist organizations in creating better visibility across their supply chain network?
•Should supply chain leaders have a greater role in the boardroom when assessing potential risks to their supply chain resiliency?
•What are the main barriers that prevent companies from implementing supply chain IoT? How can we overcome these barriers?

Sustainability is the business challenge of our lifetime, with 90% of companies’ impacts on the environment coming from supply chains (McKinsey). Fuelled by an historic surge in eCommerce demand and digital acceleration, a shift in consumer behaviour has seen customers actively seeking to buy from a company that aligns to their social, political, and environmental ideals. It is therefore no surprise that 84% of supply chain leaders plan to invest in climate adaptation and mitigation measures in the next 18 months (Gartner).
To adopt a sustainable supply chain practice, however, you need the data insights that enable you to do so without hurting your profit margin. While the last mile is notoriously the least efficient of all steps involved in order fulfilment, a review end-to-end is needed to create a visible, reliable, and more sustainable supply chain.

Key points for discussion include:
•Do you coordinate your operational risk management efforts with your sustainability efforts?
•How important do you find collaboration between buyers and suppliers when creating sustainability?
•How important is predictive analytics in being able to keep up with these reduced deadlines?
•How are you transforming your fulfilment centre to keep up with the shorter delivery cycles?
•What role does delivery technology have in improving the efficiency of your last mile?
•How can local and micro fulfilment centres support your sustainability agenda?
•How can you create better visibility over your last mile?

Supply chain digital transformation is proven to drive growth, mitigate risk, and optimize costs, but requires strong alignment between business and supply chain strategy to succeed. According to a recent Gartner survey, only 27% of leaders believe they have the talent needed to support current supply chain performance requirements. In a digital age where most have transitioned, the need to be agile and transform has never been more pressing, it is integral that talent strategy is in alignment with the digital business strategy.

Key points for discussion include:
•How can you balance identifying and embracing the right technologies as well as empowering employees to do more with technology and data? Is talent the key differentiator for the future of your supply chain?
•What emerging technologies should you be reviewing for your 5-year roadmap?
•How can the use of AI, automation, robotics give your supply chain a competitive edge?
•How to manage the skills gap, training and upskilling vs bringing in new talent
•Managing cultural shifts as technology is integrated throughout supply chains
•Looking past traditional KPIs for more dynamic and innovative tools to manage people and monitor success

Managing inventory is a challenging task. The process and results impact every aspect of your business.
Staying on top of your inventory and managing it efficiently helps you meet demand, generate sales and avoid significant unnecessary cost.

After the challenges of the pandemic, 2022 was going to be a year of recovery, rebuilding and relative stability. How wrong we were. Predicting the future economic outlook is harder now than at any time in most peoples’ professional lives. How can you prepare your fulfilment operation for the next five years, when you aren’t sure what your volumes will be next week, let alone next year.
Jones will explore how these uncertainties might affect retail and ecommerce operations and propose strategies for building agility into fulfilment operations, so sales and profits remain resilient.

The changes impacting supply chains in recent years have been immense. Skills shortages, the urgency to rebuild sustainable supply chains and the possibilities of accelerated digital change have kept every supply chain professional busy. After several years of making changes, how do you take stock to know if your company is on the right track to create advantage or is simply adapting to essential market changes. How do you make the pivot to advantage?
With a focus primarily on sustainability, but also covering the related areas of digital transformation and labor market changes, the session examines the obstacles to making leading change happen including the importance of business design and aligned strategies, creating space for change, outward looking policy advocacy and the impacts of reward systems. The discussion is based on Chris 30 year learnings and observations driving supply chain change from a finance, supply chain and a sustainability perspective.

Customer centric and intelligent supply chains have never been as important. With an historic shift in consumer demand and digital acceleration, price is no longer the main competitive differentiator when it comes to customer fulfilment. Creating and delivering a supply chain which is innovative, hyper personalized and forward thinking is key to gaining competitive advantage. During this panel discussion you will hear from supply chain leaders as they discuss how they are responding with the shift to customer centricity, the new challenges this brings and their predictions for the future.