Due to its inherent complexity, market demands, and outside realities, a supply chain can be challenging to manage. Supply chains have expanded to become global labyrinths. A company must predict the future demand for a product in order to make enough in advance and to prevent unexpected sales delays since procuring extra stock would require a multi-month trip on a container ship. Inaccurate predictions may lead to the cancellation of millions of dollars’ worth of orders or the wasting of millions on inventory that will soon be discarded.

Today, there is a major inflation crisis across the globe resulting from rising oil prices and the war in Ukraine, which is challenging to address in the near future. But, spatial tools and GIS might provide a means to lessen the effects of supply chains that are contributing to some of the high inflation prices. GIS mapping ties many different data sources together and allows experts to have a visual and intuitive picture of what is going on in the supply chain at their fingertips. 

Why GIS?

GIS is an essential tool for Supply Chain Management (SCM) experts because it manages enormous volumes of location-based data to generate information that aids executives in making better decisions. GIS is an excellent tool to utilize to address supply chain difficulties because it is frequently used in fields such as utilities, planning, building, government services, and retail site planning.

The fact that practically all forms of data include a spatial component is what makes GIS so powerful. Professionals in SCM with the necessary expertise may monitor and control both resources and processes by using locational data as a guide. These resources could be raw materials or component inventories, transportation or distribution sites for trucks or ships, and finished items, whether they are in a remote or regular location.

By managing processes and resources, SCM experts may combine data and consider possible effects of product placement and delivery, geopolitical unrest on routes used by transits, delays at distribution centers, the materials’ availability and timing, as well as anticipated client needs. Not only is it possible to manage enormous volumes of data, GIS systems can display it in comprehensive, visual formats. 

Using GIS, SCM executives can more readily identify potential delays and trends, look at the underlying data and make any required adjustments to maintain smooth operations. Supply networks require geographic diversity to maintain options and save more time and money. More control over growing complexity must strike a balance between affordability and accessibility. GIS should be a component of the SCM toolkit since modern challenges demand modern solutions.

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