A Vision of Digitalization in Supply Chain Management and Logistics

Abstract

Digitalization requires a new form of management to master the transformation process of corporations and companies. The Dortmund Management Model structures the focus areas of the digital transformation along the management tasks goal, planning, decision, realization and monitoring as well as the common socio-technical subsystems technological, organizational and personnel - enriched by a fourth dimension: information. Additionally, the acceleration factors transformation, migration and change management are taken into account. This paper embraces a vision for a persistent management of production and supply chain networks in order to achieve a holistic Management 4.0. The emerging developments of technology, methods, tools and models in production and supply chain research are connected and merged into a big picture of digital supply chain management and logistics. The interfaces between management tasks show specific characteristics of digital business processes in particular, which are hereinafter exemplarily outlined: New business models and value-creation networks are based on adaption intelligent production systems, which are interconnected with digital models for continuous planning and reconfiguration. At the shop floor and between sites orders are completed by autonomous guided vehicles (AGV) with intelligent load carriers. Decentralized negotiations and decisions across company boundaries concluded with smart contracts are enabling reasonable and sustainable distribution of the value creation processes. Humans are still in the center of action – abilities are developed by integrated competence management, new learning approaches and human-centered assistance systems coupled with AI-based decision-making support. New types of organizations allow a synergetic collaboration of humans and machines. The benefit of integrating new production and transport technologies becomes assessable and accelerates the ongoing renewal of existing networks. This paper provides an overview of possible potential and connecting factors by linking different technological developments towards supply chain, logistics, production and management research and shows further research demands.