What's the single biggest challenge of supply chain management? Well, it depends on your view of the business. Webalo believes it's the end to end visibility of the supply chain--in other words, understanding the cause and effect of activities that may occur to impact supply chain performance: whether it's insufficient incoming supply, unexpected performance within manufacturing (low yields, quality issues, equipment downtime) or problems downstream (within the warehouse or in transportation--either orders not being delivered, or incorrect orders being shipped).  

Webalo has been working closely with the food and beverage industry for several years, and we've noticed a definitive move to them evaluating and adopting digital technologies for increased efficiencies in their supply chain.  A lot of the focus is on what we call the Frontline Worker--those task workers that are directly involved with the process, from the planning through execution of the product manufacturing through the delivery--ie, the entire value chain.

Visit an industrial plant - a mine, power generation plant or manufacturing facility for example - and automation, mechanical and digital, is everywhere. Millions of dollars are invested in machinery, robotics, enterprise and industrial software systems that run and operate a plant. However, chat with the workforce, the frontline workers themselves, and you’ll find that they’re largely disconnected from all of this automation – when they do their job, it's paper, voice or experience-based and rarely digitized.