Digital Supply Chains: Key Facilitator to Industry 4.0 and New Business Models, Leveraging S/4 HANA and Beyond, 3rd Edition PDF by Götz G. Wehberg

Contents

Preface
Over the past 20 years, a variety of new tenologies have been developed. Under the heading “Industry 4.0”, Germany and other countries want to leverage these opportunities, with the goal of securing competitiveness and prosperity. e first industrial revolution introduced meanization. en, mass production (second revolution) and automation (third revolution) followed. e focus was on large-scale production and efficiency of human resources. Now, the fourth revolution aims at the flexibility of the value ain. is means mobilization of maines and objects. And it offers great opportunities for the management of the flow of goods and associated information. It is time for digital supply ains!

Four figures are valuable in establishing the context. It is estimated that there are currently some 20 billion connected devices worldwide, of whi 25 percent of these are industrial appliances (IHS Tenology 2015). By 2025, this number of connected things is expected to be some 100 billion, and the industrial share will be around 50 percent. e role of supply chain management for su a world of connected things is rather underestimated.

Taking into account these new possibilities, I would like to combine tenology and business perspectives with this publication. Supply ain management is complex in nature, and it is becoming more and more difficult to deal with su complexity. If you look into the details, you will find that today supply ains are allenged by mass customization, and thus an increasingly complex product portfolio and a higher number of rush orders or ange requests. Disruptions along the ain, for example, because of breakdowns of logistics infrastructure, electricity blaouts, biological catastrophes and terrorist aas, are becoming more difficult to handle. In addition, factors from the inner value ain are becoming more volatile in terms of unplanned production shutdowns, bolenes at suppliers or siness of staff. Moreover, supply ain management is a key facilitator for new digital business models.

Current practices, however, do not respond to these allenges properly. Established supply ain planning tools, for example, typically refer to traditional concepts of material resource planning. ey do not leverage the latest tenology, su as low-cost sensors and predictive analytics. Oentimes su tools are not able to effectively address these allenges. In addition, a mature supply ain theory is laing, but would be useful from an academic standpoint. is is why I have complemented this discussion with relevant concepts and theories, where available. As I suggest, there is value in understanding the roots of digital supply ains in terms of their scientific rationale. e gap between the explosive increase of supply ain complexity on the one hand, and the la of solutions on the other hand, is the starting point for this volume. e first part of this volume seeks to clearly present the interrelations between complexity and supply ain management. Because both physical and information flow must be considered together, the latest information processing tenology must be taken into account. Various aspects of modern IT, su as the Internet of ings, the digital twin and cloud computing, are placed into context, as well as relevant IT standards, su as big data reference aritecture.

Because digital supply ain management has to build on existing approaes, in the second part of this volume the existing understandings of supply ain management are briefly systematized. Building on this, a reference framework for digital supply ains is introduced. e subsequent remarks in the third and fourth parts of the volume aim to fill this frame of reference with content. e analysis focuses on the information and planning systems of supply ain management. e reference frame reflects essential paerns with regards to supply ain profiles, the knowledge of whi forms the basis for handling complexity.

Selected use cases illustrate the frame and point the way towards digitalization. While the first edition of this book was published in German in 2015, the second edition has been translated to English and enried by further practical experience and use cases. It has been the basis for further development, including a peer review via my think-tank website and the associated supply ain community. Based on this review and quality improvements associated with it, I am now publishing the third edition.

Part 4 highlights the development of supply cains over time in terms of concrete life cycles and phases. Based on this, guiding principles for the development of digital supply chains are explained. Perspectives for a future supply ain management will follow in the course of the fih part, whi concludes the presentation.

This publication is the result of teamwork. My thanks to my customers as well as the supply ain community, my family, friends and colleagues. Particularly noteworthy in this context are Prof. Ingrid Göpfert, Prof. Stefan Spinler and Prof. Ulri onemann. Without them all, this publication would not have come about.