By embracing four specific trends highlighted in Accenture’s 2014 Technology Vision, leaders can achieve more with less and build a more effective, future-ready defense logistics domain.
Digital-Physical Blur
By digitizing the supply chain, defense forces will vastly increase the capture and use of relevant data that can in turn fuel predictive capabilities. This is significant: public sector organizations that implement predictive asset maintenance initiatives have realized 15-30 percent cuts in their total maintenance costs, providing a 10-fold return on investment. Even more crucially, such initiatives have reduced breakdowns by up to 75 percent—a potentially vital gain in performance if replicated in defense.
Business of Applications
Apps are already helping private sector logistics organizations transform their effectiveness, such as DHL’s SmartPOD app that gives vehicle drivers and others a means of capturing real-time data and electronic proof of delivery. This in turn also creates a real-time data feed that can be used to monitor and optimize operations to continuously meet the changing needs of their customers.
Data Supply Chain
The overall aim is to create a data supply chain that enables data to flow easily and usefully throughout the organization. For example, with predictive analytics, maintenance crews can better forecast issues and start to proactively prepare. Simultaneously, inventory systems can become ‘aware’, collaborating with supply chain partners to prime inventories ahead of requirements or automatically triggering procurement activities for forecasted deficiencies.
Harnessing Hyperscale
Enabling digital defense logistics has implications. Most obviously, having a massive volume of logistics data flowing through an organization requires significant storage and rapid processing capabilities. A recent data center migration project within Australia’s Department of Defense is expected to lead to savings on support and equipment costs, enhance the delivery of information and communication services and reduce energy consumption by the Department.
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