Digital Supply Chain Emerges as Key Trend for 2024

Digital supply chains topped the list of the Top 10 Supply Chain Trends of 2024, published by the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM).

ASCM projects that the worldwide market for supply chain management applications will grow to around $31 billion by 2026, highlighting the significance of supply chain architecture investments.

Future developments will be influenced by a number of major trends, such as the digital supply chain, big data and analytics (which ranked first in 2023), visibility, and traceability. Your team will need to acquire new skills and knowledge in order to meet these key pillars, especially in relation to the Supply Chain Operations Reference Digital Standard (SCOR DS). The understanding that enabling needs to be a bigger part of supply chain orchestration is what's causing this change.

Following the digital supply chain and big data and analytics, the Top 10 include artificial intelligence, supply chain investment, visibility, traceability, and location intelligence, disruption and risk management, agility and resilience, supply chain cyber security, green and circular supply chains, and geopolitical and deglobalization of supply chains.

With digital supply chains projected to be the industry's primary focus in 2024, ASCM predicts that in the coming year, more supply chain organisations will transform their networks into connected, intelligent, scalable, customisable, and agile digital ecosystems. Some will achieve complete digital transformation, while others will progress more slowly by balancing long-term investment in automation with immediate implementation of solutions that reduce repetitive tasks and cognitive fatigue while allowing employees to focus on areas where humans outperform machines.

Converting data from physical to digital format enables the internet of things, artificial intelligence, blockchain and smart contracts, cloud-based solutions, and a plethora of other developing technologies that require high-quality digital inputs.

The ASCM is the world's biggest non-profit supply chain association, linking companies worldwide to the most recent thought leadership on all elements of the supply chain.