Rising fuel and shipping costs alongside prolonged geopolitical uncertainty have had a profound impact on businesses’ ability to run efficient supply chains. Meanwhile, customer requirements have also escalated, with many now expecting next-day delivery at low cost. These factors have combined to mean that each unnecessary truck mile, stock discrepancy or emergency reorder is increasingly difficult for companies to absorb.
Many businesses are therefore looking to technology to help them build more efficient and resilient operations. Artificial Intelligent (AI) is increasingly finding enhanced operational efficiencies for businesses by using source data to predict volatility, make informed decisions and take action to protect and optimise supply chains. However, accurate, real-time inventory data is fundamental to this adoption as these metrics provide the baseline visibility needed for AI to function.
Businesses therefore need to know what inventory they have, where it has been and where it is right now. Technologies like RAIN RFID can help to deliver the item-level intelligence that businesses need to shore up supply chain resilience, allowing them to move beyond periodic stock checks and fragmented data towards a more digitalised supply chain, underpinned by real-time inventory information. In doing so, businesses can leverage AI tools to make faster decisions, reduce operational waste and gain tangible value from their deployments.
Turning inventory visibility into a commercial advantage
Historically, inventory accuracy was seen as ‘back-office’: something that mainly concerns warehouse teams carrying out stock counts or locating products. However, over the last decade an increasing number of businesses are recognising the significant operational value that product visibility can provide. Better data allows for more agile stock management, which allows businesses to carry lower quantities. This means less capital sits tied up as physical goods on warehouse shelves and more can be reinvested in the business itself.
In today’s fast-paced commercial environment, the consequences of not having an accurate picture of inventory can be significant. Changing tariffs, shipping delays, a sudden change in transportation costs or disruption to a key route can have knock-on effects across an entire network. The longer it takes an organisation to understand what inventory it has available and where it is located, the harder it becomes to respond efficiently.
The value of real-time, location-aware inventory data is not simply knowing how many products you have and where; it elevates a business’s ability to react and remain resilient to external market forces.
An undisputed source of truth
Trusted real-time data is complementary to another emerging disrupter to the supply chain industry – artificial intelligence. AI systems are increasingly being explored within supply chains to help businesses identify patterns and predict changes to make more informed decisions, faster. This includes areas such as demand forecasting, autonomous replenishment, dynamic routing and supply chain risk detection. However, each of these uses will need to be underpinned by reliable data. Otherwise, sophisticated AI tools risk simply automating uncertainty.
A forecasting model using inaccurate inventory records could produce a prediction that is disconnected from reality. Dynamic routing and risk-management tools, for example, are only as useful as the information their input data provides. Item-level intelligence is therefore a non-negotiable for any business looking to take advantage of AI automation. RAIN RFID is therefore the perfect complementary solution, providing the item-level visibility needed to allow AI systems to function.
Enabling item-level intelligence
RAIN tags can be attached to or embedded within products to enable businesses to automatically capture their movements. Businesses gain item-level intelligence, with an immediate and continuous view of inventory as it moves through warehouses, distribution centres and other stages of the supply chain. When compared with manual inventory processes, using RAIN tags is both much faster, with each machine-readable tag being recognised in a fraction of a second and far more accurate, with an average accuracy rate of 98%.
Furthermore, as businesses diversify suppliers and build out regional distribution networks to reduce concentration risk, the complexity of managing those networks also grows. We are in an era of global supply chains, with a single product now often made up of constituent parts from factories in all corners of the world. Interoperability is the key to any successful international supply chain, so RAIN standards require that each tag holds a unique ID based on universal serialised frameworks such as that of GS1.
This organised, logical data structure ensures that a product from one factory can be read and properly decoded across different industries and around the globe. It also prevents duplicated tags, which should they enter the supply chain, could result in inventory miscounts and logistical errors that could paralyse the entire system.
The speed and accuracy RAIN provides are essential to meeting modern consumer demands. Just-in-time operations, for example, have no margin for error when disruptions are frequent and recovery is slow. The process of rerouting shipments, tracking down misplaced inventory or processing returns manually can prove costly and could often have been avoided altogether. It can also result in an organisation paying more for transportation, as well as additional labour and energy to compensate for its lack of visibility.
Technologies that provide item-level intelligence help address this by providing information earlier in the process. When every tagged item can be located in seconds and each movement is captured automatically, uncertainty disappears. Rather than discovering an inventory problem when it becomes urgent, businesses using RAIN RFID have a more immediate picture of what is happening across their operations and can act quickly and accordingly.
Underpinning tomorrow’s more resilient supply chain
Unfortunately, no single technology can provide a silver bullet for the uncertainties the supply chain faces. What it can do though is provide a tool for organisations to use to make sure they are best prepared to react in a timely and efficient manner when these uncertainties inevitably occur.
Real-time item-level intelligence can provide an accurate, connected picture of the products within a global supply chain, with this foundation enhancing decision-making so that inventory flows seamlessly between people, processes and systems.
By connecting physical items with digital information, RAIN RFID ensures that the entire ecosystem of digital operations is supported – from warehouse management and logistics through to analytics and ensuring that businesses are ready to take advantage of enhanced AI-powered decision-making.
In doing so, this creates a virtuous cycle as better data enables better decisions, and those better decisions create more efficient and resilient operations.
Aileen Ryan, President and CEO of RAIN Alliance.
- AI in Supply Chain