Prepare for Supply Chain 4.0

- When I was in elementary school, the textbooks talked about the industrial revolution as an event that happened around 1800, when we invented technologies like the steam engine and railroads, but in 2017, Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, published a book called 'The Fourth Industrial Revolution". And it changed the way that a lot of us think about technology. Schwab argued that the industrial revolution was actually just the first in a series of major transformations that business and society have undergone. The second industrial revolution happened around 1900 with the introduction of electricity and assembly lines. The third industrial revolution started in the 1960s with computers and semiconductors and then the internet. And right now we're witnessing a fourth industrial revolution because there are a lot of powerful new technologies coming together around us that are transforming our society in huge ways. These are technologies like 5G communications, sensors and the internet of things, artificial intelligence, gene sequencing, nanotechnology and more. They're changing what's possible and they're changing our customers' expectations. We're at the beginning of a new business era called industry 4.0 and our supply chains need to get ready for it. Supply chain management isn't just about the movement of physical products. It's about delivering all of the things that our customers value, which often includes services and digital products too. We also need to think about how companies exchange money and share information, because new technologies are changing lots of things about how money, materials and information flow through the supply chain. The Singapore economic development board has developed a tool called the smart industry readiness index. That explains four steps that companies need to take in order to undergo a digital transformation and prepare for industry 4.0. Learn key concepts and build a common language for alignment, evaluate the state of existing facilities and the company's readiness level for industry 4.0, architect a comprehensive transformation strategy and an implementation roadmap, and deliver impact and sustain transformation initiatives. I've designed this course to help you and your colleagues with that first step. Learning about the key industry 4.0 technologies so that you have a common baseline. We'll start by looking at the technologies that are already common in supply chains. Then we'll look at some of the newest technologies that are likely to have a big impact in the next few years. And finally, we'll look at how you can use all of these technologies to reimagine the ways that your company creates value and how you connect with your customers and suppliers.