DC Velocity - April 2018

t h ou g ht l e ad er s

AN AMERICAN

BULLDOG

Finally, the right baler at the right price. The American 3560 CD is a stout machine designed and built with the quality you’d expect from American. It’s been created especially for distribution centers, low volume recycling centers and other facilities that need a reliable small baler. It’s compact and powerful like a Bulldog and a true performer in its class. With the vision and tenacity of an eagle, American Baler takes performance to new heights. Proudly built in Bellevue, Ohio, USA.

INTEGRIT Y I QUALIT Y I RELIABILIT Y I VALUE

800.843.7512 AmericanBaler.com

28 DC VELOCITY APRIL 2018 www.dcvelocity.com and hyperspectral imaging, which gauges a food product’s internal qualities, and blockchains to ensure food safety and freshness.

Some others include tempera-
ture control and Internet of Things
(IoT) systems that enable virtual
control towers; engaging customers
with virtual reality and augmented
reality; virtual malls and the mon-
etization of virtual space; moving
“digital duplex” conversations with
inanimate objects that are coded
with information from the point of
purchase to engage the consumer
at the point of consumption; per-
sonalized business-to-person products,
services, and communications; emotive
and psychological measurement systems
that can adapt the selling process to each
customer in real time; algorithms that
power gamified virtual planning towers;
and continuous dynamic reconfiguration
of the supply chain so that it is always
optimized.

All of these have an underlying systemic implication for the supply chain’s architecture and for the dynamic response networks that need to be created to enable them.

QHow do you go about determin- ing whichtechnologiesareimportant and where to apply them?

AThe jobs that must be done in com- merce and logistics don’t fundamentally change. Customers will always want to buy clothes, and we will always have to complete a financial transaction and provide the goods, for instance. But evolving technologies can overcome resource constraints, provide step-change cost advantages, and give us new opportunities to delight the customer. So, I look at the jobs we need to do and map to them the relevant technologies to create a framework of opportunities. As an example, if a package of pretzels can “talk” digitally to the customer and engage in the process of cooking, suddenly the concept of food logistics and brand packaging looks very different. New value gets unlocked for customers and brand companies.

Here’s another example: When they are choosing clothes, customers are regularly at the mercy of the sizes and colors that are already available. The technology exists that would allow a customer to choose the style, fabric, size, color, and other options for the garment to be made to order and shipped out overnight. Then, the customer could have exactly what he or she wanted each time without the risk of the size or preferred color being out of stock.