Today’s wood marketplace is investing in digital technology across organizations. However, most of the timber companies are focusing on digital efforts to improve their quality management and IT operations, as well as to enhance the execution of supply chain and production. Recently, Swedish wood companies are using a range of technologies for optimizing their supply chain, where the cloud is the most widely adopted one. However, companies seem to be moving their focus on other technologies such as analytics, AI, and advanced process control. Most business executives see these technologies as being a strategically essential tool. This has a positive impact on forestry trade activities, such as management, maintenance, and speeding up forest management in Sweden. Nevertheless, they also seem to have earned great potential for overall return on investment.
These findings show that the executives feel that the shift towards the cloud works well with the digital supply chain. For instance, the Swedish Forest Sector has been seizing a large amount of data from processes for a long time, especially in sawmills. Implementing AI and analytics will allow them to make efficient use of that data to speed up the operations. And by expanding the use of API systems from sawmills to downstream converting logistics operations, the timber companies will be in a better position to use data-driven automation. This will only boost the efficiency of the supply chain activities and help to address growing shortages of skilled labour production.
The Industry’s Approach to Digital Transformation:
To gain a competitive advantage, an organization must either perform activities at a lower cost or perform them in a way that differentiates them from others. It is the move towards value creation, which is essential for the wood marketplace to navigate through Covid-19 driven volatility.
For some customers, timber shipping could be a challenge. It is because timber is shipped in large volume, which distorts the close coordination between various parties from the boarding of the cargo, the carriers, documentation part to delivery of goods.
As per research, most of the people working in the B2B marketplace spend much of their time on the following:
- 40% trying to calculate CIF prices for the product
- 25% sending offers
- 65% drafting paper documents
- 40% sharing information and trying to stay up to date
- 20% tracking and tracing their shipments manually
- 80% of those admitted that they use Excel or Shared Folders to organize their shipment deals and files
To avoid spending unnecessary time on the areas, the digital supply chain is brought into being, to focus on the matching demand and supply for particular commodity products. With a digital supply chain in place, all counterparties held in logistics activities can exchange information in real-time, inventories, manufacturing, and logistics capacities, and also provide on-time feedback on the changes required.
Shared Collaboration and Smart Planning Systems:
This superior level of smart integration would allow employees, importers, exporters, and freight forwarders to plan collaboratively within a shared workspace, using a single dashboard to run scenarios and estimate significant trade-offs such as cost, capabilities, delivery performance, and more. Additionally, the workflow can be accurately optimized to speed up the collaboration process, and finally, deliver fast and reliable information while delivering finished goods to customers.
By adopting digital automation across the entire supply chain without any human intervention, delivery time can be potentially reduced and freight, as well as Forest management in Sweden, can be optimized.
Seeing Through the Logistics Network:
The ultimate key to success for any forestry supply chain sector is the effective exchange of information and having a 360-degree view of the entire supply chain processes. The traditional supply chain is often caught with delays and disruption, caused mostly due to the lack of proper information and on-time information. Hence, the all-embracing objective for the digital supply chain is to open up the supply network for all to view properly. B2B marketplace is attracting companies to provide this level of visibility and demanding fast information about shipment arrivals with real-time notification. But with the help of RFID technology in logistics, you can easily monitor minute-to-minute life tracking throughout the different stages of the supply chain processes. RFID helps in such immediate data capture and sharing throughout the network.
Summing Up:
So, you see, as the Swedish Forest Sector proceeds with the digital efforts, they need to think not just about the technology itself, but also about how the digital technology works in the organization. If you want to stay ahead of all information, it's time you make use of the digital supply chain to improve and expand your business scope.