The Supply Chain Matters blog features our ninth in the year 2020 consolidated editions of This Week in Supply Chain Management Tech. Â Since our last full edition published in mid-July, the frequency of tech related announcements seems to have accelerated.
This series presents a brief synopsis of noteworthy supply chain management focused technology news which we believe would be of specific interest to our global-based blog readership.
Included in this edition are capsulated highlights of noteworthy announcements and/or developments from electric vehicle and home appliance manufacturing, electronic 3D Printing, ERP and SCM software providers.
Ernst and Young
GE Aviation AiRXOS Business Unit
Tive
Blue Yonder and Yantriks
Bristlecone
Resilinc and CreditRisk Monitor
ISMS Applications
KBX Logistics and Transflo
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Ernst and Young Announces Expanded Alliance with Procter & Gamble
To better respond to today’s rapidly changing supply chain ecosystem, Ernst and Young (EY) announced an expanded alliance with Procter & Gamble (P&G) to provide a broad range of supply chain capabilities designed to address businesses’ unprecedented challenges and market disruption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Building off an existing EY-P&G Alliance, rooted in manufacturing excellence, the enhanced collaboration reportedly expands the scope of the relationship to additional supply chain processes, including strategy, planning, customer service, transportation and distribution to help accelerate transformation and reduce risk in the supply chain. The alliance covers a broad suite of intellectual property (IP) combined with transformation methodology. This includes:
Supply chain foundations, which provide core foundations for supply network operations (SNO) processes, including organizational design and foundational work processes and roles.
Advanced tools and automation, which offer innovative resources and techniques designed to enhance and/or digitize existing work processes to improve efficiencies.
The Run-to-Target (RTT) Transformation Accelerator to provide a structured self-service methodology to achieve rapid results and create sustainable change by empowering the workforce.
Leveraging the EY and P&G suite of assets alongside a structured implementation methodology allows businesses to accelerate deployment and build organizational capability. The approach operates alongside the EY Supply Chain Intelligence Platform and Supply Chain Smart Maps™ — a set of digital tools, data and analytics to help manage and analyze ongoing performance throughout the transformation of the supply chain.
GE Aviation’s AiRXOS Announces New Technology for Public Safety Agencies
AiRXOS, a provider of Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) technology, announced the commercial availability of a new Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) application, such as drones, for Public Safety agencies. This technology is available as both a mobile as well as a Cloud based application and is targeted to eliminate the need for multiple applications and labor-intensive flight authorizations. The technology provides a single source platform with safety and operational tools and services built-in, allowing Public Safety agencies to fly quickly and with full Situational Awareness of manned and unmanned operations.
In addition to Public Safety, the technology is reportedly being focused on supporting drone-based inspections, delivery of medical supplies, and other transport uses.
AiRXOS began rolling out the Public Safety UAS technology earlier in the year in a pilot environment and currently has more than 200 US Public Safety agencies using the solution. Users include Los Angeles City Fire Department, Washington State Department of Transportation, and Larimer County, Colorado Sheriff’s Department. From highly urbanized cities, to county and state agencies, UAS is widely recognized as a strategy and a technology assisting Public Safety operations.
In addition to AiRXOS’ own technology, the company also works with ecosystem partners’ KSI Data Sciences, Inc. and Airborne International Response Team (AIRT) to provide Public Safety agencies with flexible, integrated applications and services. AiRXOS additionally participates as a member of the National Sheriffs’ Association UAS Working Group established earlier this year to create a template that governs law enforcement’s use of UAS.
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Tive Announces 5G Non-Lithium-Ion Tracker
Boston based Tive, Inc., a supply chain visibility technology provider has announced the availability of the Tive Solo 5G™ Non-Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) Tracker. Powered by Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries, the new tracker reportedly meets the requirements of supply chain buyers and shippers who decided to remove Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) powered recorders and trackers from all of their item-level tracking processes.
The Tive Solo 5G tracker, introduced in the latter half of 2019, was designed with the ability to replace Lithium-Ion batteries with safer, more environmentally friendly power sources. In June, Tive started shipping Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) powered trackers to suppliers affected by the new requirement. The new trackers are available in either a disposable single-use or multi-use options.
Blue Yonder Announces Acquisition of Yantricks
Supply chain technology provider Blue Yonder (formerly JDA Software) announced that the company has acquired Yantriks, A SaaS provider of termed commerce and fulfillment microservices. The acquisition reportedly combines real-time transactional capabilities with supply chain planning, forecasting and customer fulfillment applications related to online commerce.
Founded in 2014, Westborough Massachusetts based Yantricks targets retail brands to assist in unifying inventory and fulfillment data into a single platform to help create more personalized digital commerce experiences with lowered shopping car abandonment.
No financial information has been disclosed relative to the acquisition.
Bristlecone Names a New Chief Executive Officer
San Jose based supply chain technology systems integration firm Bristlecone, a Mahindra Group Company, has named Nirav Patel as the firm’s new President and Chief Executive Officer.
A technology veteran, with more than two decades of experience in building, operating and scaling multibillion-dollar businesses. Patel was most recently Head of Global Delivery managing industry practices such as Retail, CPG, Manufacturing, Logistics and Transportation for Cognizant. Other roles include Senior Vice President and Global Markets Leader of Cognizant’s Communications, Media and Technology businesses. In this role, he led a strategic review and shift of Cognizant’s core businesses across the Telecom, Media, Entertainment and Technology sectors to pivot them to digital, and to put the company on an accelerated growth path, scaling them to over $2 billion in annual revenue globally.
Supply Chain Matters will provide additional background and perspective on the appointment of Patel in a subsequent follow-up blog.
Resilinc and CreditRisk Monitor Announce Technology Partnership
Supply chain risk management technology platform provider Resilinc Corporation, and CreditRiskMonitor, a web-based publisher of financial information, have announced a partnership to integrate CreditRiskMonitor’s FRISK® score and related financial risk assessment capabilities with Resilinc’s supply chain resiliency and risk management platform. The integrated capabilities will reportedly enable Fortune 1000 organizations to achieve greater visibility when it comes to gauging the financial health of suppliers and overall supply chain risk.
CreditRiskMonitor delivers its aforementioned proprietary FRISK® score: a reportedly 96 percent-accurate daily read on bankruptcy risk hidden within more than 57,000 public corporations worldwide as well as alternative options for assessing the financial risk of private suppliers.
ISMS Applications VendorVerifier Applications Now Live on SAP App Center
ISMS Applications, a provider of technology-assisted compliance technology to small-and-mid-sized businesses, announced that four versions of its VendorVerifier applications are now available for online purchase on SAP® App Center, the digital marketplace for SAP partner offerings. These include versions of VendorVerifier for SAP Ariba Sourcing, SAP Ariba Contracts, SAP Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance and SAP Ariba Supplier Risk. The VendorVerifier technology integrates with SAP® Ariba® solutions and helps customers drive down cost, reduce risk and protect intellectual property by expanding the community of suppliers compliant with work-from-home and other cybersecurity focused policies.
According to the announcement, buyer organizations and their suppliers face substantial sourcing and risk management challenges. Suppliers suffer from assessment fatigue, and often lack the knowledge or resources to respond to buyer requirements in areas like cybersecurity. As a consequence, buyers find their pools of suppliers are shrinking, which jeopardizes schedules and raises the cost of goods and services.
According to the announcement, the product leverages machine-learning technology to:
- Build work-from-home and other cybersecurity policies from scratch, based on requirements and best practices found in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF), buyer directives and other standards and regulations.
- Analyze existing policies against the NIST CSF and buyer-specific requirements, identifying gaps, shortcomings and Key Elements Not Included (KENI).
- Recommend upgrades to existing policies to account for gaps and KENI to help attain and maintain compliance – enhancing collaboration between buyers and suppliers and end-to-end supply chain cyber health and hygiene, complying suppliers in rather than assessing them out and providing buyers with a more competitive bidding environment.
KBX Logistics Announces Transformative Partnership with Transflo
KBX Logistics, the transportation arm for Koch Industries and an independent Koch company, announced a partnership with Transflo, a large supplier of electronic proof-of-delivery (POD) applications in the transportation industry. The strategic partnership aims to deliver digitized end-to-end automated document workflow between KBX Logistics and respective partners including drivers, carriers, shippers and receivers.
Designed with the help of Transflo’s Customer Advisory Board and several major Koch companies, these new electronic BOL & POD applications provide multiple ways for shippers affiliated with KBX Logistics to provide necessary documents to drivers, including allowing documents to be uploaded electronically and enabling document scanning through the Transflo Mobile+ app, which currently has over 1.6 million users.
According to the announcement, KBX shippers, carriers and receivers will have exclusive access which will allow each user to electronically sign and view shipping documents from their own device. This real-time access to forms with date and time stamped entries will promote further administrative efficiencies. Furthermore, documents will be indexed and stored within the Transflo document cloud and can be accessed by any of the respective parties associated with the given shipment, allowing all parties access to the documents. Users can organize paperwork digitally at any point of the load lifecycle which increases efficiencies, enhances workflows, and improves safety and compliance to COVID-19 guidance.
Supply Chain Matters readers might recall that Koch Industries recently acquired Cloud ERP technology provider Infor, including the Infor Nexus B2B Cloud platform that manages global transportation and logistics flows.
This concludes our latest edition of This Week in Supply Chain Management Tech.
An Added Note to Readers– Supply Chain Matters will feature our capsule views of This Week in Supply Chain Tech highlight series periodically as announcements warrant.
