Digital Supply Networks: Transform Your Supply Chain and Gain Competitive Advantage with Disruptive Technology and Reimagined Processes
Amit Sinha, Ednilson Bernardes, Rafael Calderon, and Thorsten Wuest
McGraw-Hill (July 2020)

“Although many parts, one body.”  Saint Paul in a letter to the Corinthians

All human beings have 11 major organ systems: integumentary, skeletal, muscular, nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular, lymphatic, respiratory, digestive, urinary, and reproductive. Organizations also have systems and one of the most important is their supply network, one that often determines its success or failure.

As Adam Mussomeli correctly points out in the Foreword, “The technological progress that has happened over the past three years allowed organizations to create a connected supply chain of business activities, enabling end-to-end planning of processes and workflows.” Digital supply networks (DSNs) have helped countless organizations to achieve tremendous value through the adoption of DSN-enabling processes.

In this remarkable volume, Amit Sinha, Ednilson Bernardes, Rafael Calderon, and Thorsten Wuest provide an abundance of information, insights, and counsel that can help their readers to plan, implement, and successfully complete a digital transformation that ensures that their organization’s supply chain creates substantial value for their customers.” The digital transformation creates disruption in three separate but interdependent areas: customer interaction, internal organizational processes, and the roles of data and technology.

These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to indicate the scope of Sinha, Bernardes, Calderon, and Wuest’s coverage:

o Digital Transformation’s Impact on Supply Chain Management (Pages 1-22)
o Waves of Industrial and Economic Change Driven by Disruptive Technological Innovation (9-16)
o Basics of Traditional Supply Chain Management (16-18)
o Collapse of the Linear Supply Chain (23-48)
o Bid Data and Data Analytics (49-67)

o Interoperability (63)
o Robotics (69-87)
o AI and Machine learning algorithms (72-78 and 82-87)
o Machine Learning, AI, and Robotics (89-104)
o Synchronized Planning (105-123)

o Digital Project Development (125-140)
o Intelligent Suopply: pro0curement in the Digital Age (144-146)
o Smart Manufacturing and Intelligent Asset Management (159-183)
o Digit Supply Network and Dynamic Achievement, and, Dynamic Fulfillment Attributes (187-190)
o Connected Customers in the Age of Personalization (205-223)

o Strategic Skill Sets (232-235)
o Workforce, Skill Changes, and Social Impact (225-238)
o DSN Transformation Playbook (239-254)
o Recommended Steps for a Playbook (245-249)
o Use Cases: Amazon, Georgia-Pacific, Walmart Canada, Land O’Lakes, JD.Com, Unilever, Caterpillar, Nike, Maven Machines, and Daimler ((255-273)

I hope that those who have preliminary interest in this book do not incorrectly assume that its value is limited almost entirely to organizational transformations to improve the given supply network. In a perfect business world, organizational transformation is (or at least should be) an on-going process of constant, innovative modification. The same is true of a supply network. There is [begin italics] always [end italics] room for improvement in areas such as communication, cooperation, and (especially) collaboration between and among those connected within the given network.

I congratulate Amit Sinha, Ednilson Bernardes, Rafael Calderon, and Thorsten Wuest on a brilliant achievement. The material they provide can be of substantial value to leaders in almost any organization, whatever its value may be. Here in a single source is just about everything needed to transform a supply chain in order to achieve and then maintain a decisive competitive advantage, “with disruptive technologies and reimagined processes.”