The supply chain and COVID-19

By Peter Scott, Seagull Scientific senior regional sales manager

COVID-19 created disruptions.

Across every aspect of business and manufacturing, companies were forced to adjust in real time as the pandemic created — and continues to cause — logistical hurdles stressing the supply chain.

The companies in Gartner’s 2020 Supply Chain Top 25 used innovation and best practices to navigate those hurdles.

Worldwide, companies spent the past year trying to find ways to maintain the supply of goods in an efficient way that continued to meet customer expectations, while at the same time being faced with the unprecedented challenge of a global pandemic that brought large swaths of the global community to a grinding halt.

In the wake of the pandemic, companies have realized that recent supply chain management trends like offshoring and JIT manufacturing can hamper supply availability. And COVID-19 has proven that it’s imperative for businesses to implement supply chain practices that fully integrate into the company’s processes and tracked from start to finish, providing real-time data that creates a structure for nimble action.

And new technologies that once seemed exotic are becoming commonplace, things like AI, robotics, Digital Twins. For a supply chain to function efficiently in this new era, organizations need to ensure they’re optimized for success, deploying best practices to prevent interruptions.

Data carriers like barcodes and RFID — Auto ID — are at the very core of supply chain traceability. Auto ID enables track-and-trace systems that provide the interoperability that allows a company to track items deep into every stage of the production cycle. 

Data carriers provide the base for communicating and managing vast amounts of data, providing end to end traceability and interoperability, helping to maintain regulatory and compliance standards. It’s especially important to get them right when deploying new technologies — and they’re the foundation of Digital Twin networks.

The right labeling system completely integrates with a company’s existing systems, delivering a single source of truth and simplifies workflows into seamless, accurate and secure processes.

23 of those 25 companies listed as top supply chains by Gartner rely on BarTender.

BarTender delivers on cost and operational efficiency, and enables the robust and accurate labeling that creates traceability and interoperability throughout the supply chain.