Wincanton has published Transforming Logistics: A Leader’s Guide.

Its aim is to open critical discussions with business leaders around the key digitisation changes transforming the logistics industry, inspiring innovation and greater efficiency in the process.

Rather than offering answers and action points, it engages with decision-makers by asking big questions. These focus on themes such as supply chain visibility, automation and sustainability.

With technologies including Cobots*, Blockchain, 3D printing and robotic suits starting to become integral parts of supply chains, it is important that leaders understand how they can all work together alongside existing infrastructure. This new guide demonstrates the importance of this convergence and how it affects the role of people.

This is the second guide from Wincanton, following up on The Wincanton Guide to the Digitised Supply Chain; published in 2018.

This latest guide poses key questions to business leaders across four key areas, focusing on the imperatives in each and how to address the challenges they present:

·         Seeing more: Visibility across the supply chain is crucial but impossible to achieve unless all parts of the business work together. How will your business achieve full visibility? How can you access the right data and what does decision making look like with that data under your control?

·         Upgrading work: How do you collaborate with Cobots? Are you already ready for robots? What does it mean for your approach to recruitment, training and development?

·         Progressing business:  Leaders tend to focus on a narrow approach to building faster and more agile teams to remain competitive in logistics. Now though, they must also consider the longer term and a wider perspective. How can they ensure their business is sustainable? How do they keep the business agile enough?

·         Mindset: Leaders must now be prepared for not just one period of transformation but constant change, working in networks and thinking about whether or not command and control structures still work. What are leaders doing today to make sure the business is still competitive in a decade?

Adrian Colman, CEO of Wincanton, said: “In this guide for leaders, we explore the core digital transformation issues, offering new perspectives on the risks and benefits to business. We also share our experiences of what we are finding by implementing digital transformation in a number of parts of our own business, and areas of our customers’ businesses.

 “We want to help the business leaders initiate those first vital conversations about how your supply chain can best adapt for the future. It’s a necessary but challenging process, and one which brings opportunity for those prepared to embrace it.”

Download the full guide here