Supply Chain Twin is a new Google Cloud tool that allows businesses to create a digital twin – a representation of their physical supply chain — by arranging data to gain a fuller perspective of suppliers, stocks, and events like the weather. The Supply Chain Pulse module, which can be used with Supply Chain Twin to deliver dashboards, analytics, alerts, and collaboration in Google Workspace, has arrived alongside Supply Chain Twin.
The majority of businesses lack visibility into their supply chains, resulting in store “stock outs” and manufacturers’ aging inventories. Out-of-stock products alone are expected to cost $1.14 trillion by 2020. The necessity for insights into operations to dynamically change fleet routes and inventory levels has been highlighted by supply chain interruptions over the last year and a half.
Companies can use Supply Chain Twin to combine data from multiple sources and share views of the datasets with suppliers and partners. The solution works with enterprise business systems that store information on a company’s locations, goods, orders, and inventory operations, as well as data from suppliers and partners including stock and inventory levels and material transit status. Contextual data from public sources such as weather, risk, and sustainability is also used by Supply Chain Twin.
Simulation methods based on “digital twins” have become popular in other fields. SenSat, situated in London, for example, assists clients in the construction, mining, energy, and other industries in creating location models for projects they’re working on. GE provides technology that enables businesses to create digital twins of genuine machines and track their performance. Microsoft also offers Azure Digital Twins and Project Bonsai, both of which replicate the relationships and interactions between people, places, and technologies.
In a statement, Hans Thalbauer, managing director of supply chain and logistics at Google Cloud, warned that siloed and insufficient data is limiting organizations’ insight into their supply chains. The Supply Chain Twin helps customers to obtain deeper insights into their operations, assisting them in optimizing supply chain processes ranging from sourcing and planning to distribution and logistics, says the company.
Supply Chain Pulse, which debuted today as well, provides real-time insight, event management, and AI-driven optimization and simulation. Teams can use performance dashboards to dive down into operational KPIs, making it easy to see supply chain status. They can also create workflows that allow users to collaborate to resolve issues by setting alerts that are triggered when metrics hit user-defined criteria. The AI-driven algorithm recommendations in Supply Chain Pulse offer reactions to occurrences, indicate more complicated issues, and simulate the impact of hypothetical scenarios.
In the next weeks, Google Cloud users will be able to integrate Supply Chain Pulse and Supply Chain Twin with their existing setups using data, app, and system integration partners such as Climate Engine, Craft, Crux, Project44, SAP, Accenture, Deloitte, Pluto7, and TCS. Renault is one of the firms that has implemented Supply Chain Twin to have a better understanding of inventory, suppliers, and other factors.
Following the release of Google’s Visual Inspection AI, another industrial solution that uses AI to detect faults in manufactured items, Supply Chain Twin and Supply Chain Twin were released. As business owners try to modernize their factories and speed up processes, logistics, manufacturing, retail, and consumer product goods are seeing a renaissance. Manufacturing businesses predict efficiency gains from digital transitions during the next five years, according to a 2020 PricewaterhouseCoopers poll. The value creation potential of businesses implementing “Industry 4.0” — the automation of traditional industrial procedures — is estimated to be $3.7 trillion in 2025, according to McKinsey’s research with the World Economic Forum.
