TECH OUTLOOKDecember - January9automation of repetitive and physically intensive labor will in future greatly transform the logistics industry. Robots designed to work collaboratively with humans--both physical devices and software (virtual bots)--are on the increase. "An estimated 49 percent activities that people are paid to do today can potentially be automated by adapting current, demonstrated technology", according to McKinsey. Human-machine collaboration will greatly influence the future of digital work. In operations robots designed to assist workers with manual handling activities will prove critical to supporting an aging workforce. Software robotics will be essential, particularly in the back office to handle significant amount of manual and repetitive date entry (spreadsheet data entry, custom document processing, etc.). Here, technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in combination with AI can automate many tasks. This enables both time and cost savings, and allows workers to do more meaningful and skilled activities such as process innovation. Flexible, on-demand workforce models in logistics will become common place as sharing economy principles gain adoption in the enterprise. Key concepts include crowd-sourcing delivery (e.g., Postmates) and on-demand staffing to cover operational peaks with unprecedented speed (e.g., Shifgig). Nevertheless, the digital work model comes with its own key challenges such as--achieving harmonious balance between human workers and physical/virtual robotics--ensuring sufficient wages and job security when deploying or utilizing on-demand logistics concepts--enable relevant training and upskilling for exiting logistics workers particularly for technical tasks. Supergrid Logistics: To take a long-shot view beyond five years horizon, Supergrid Logistics is one of the key trends to be understood. It will indeed raise a new generation of logistics companies with primary focus on the orchestration of global supply chain networks that integrates swarms of different production enterprises and logistics providers. This opens up new business opportunities for different logistics branches--4PL providers, companies with special expertise in complex or specific services, and even small local couriers and startups. In the future, customers can increasingly choose from a large variety of logistics services globally, thanks to cloud-powered online market places and startups that are unbundling traditional logistics integrators. A logistics supergrid concept spanning the entire globe can smoothly and flexibly integrate all parties along multiple supply chains enabling collaboration of modular services for all types of customer, maximizing efficiency and reducing cost. The future market segmentation splits the logistics provider market into new actor categories such as services specialists, users, configurators, orchestrators of logistics solutions, and service mall owners. Logistics malls will establish a new degree of market transparency and give small local companies access to the global market. Global players will focus primarily on cross-border integrations, premium services and orchestration of regional and local service providers in a global supergrid. A testimonial to this supergrid logistics is Alibaba--who is building a Global Logistics Network. Within 18 years, Alibaba has risen to become the world's largest and most valuable retailer with operations in more than 200 countries. Whereas, DPDHL operates in 220 countries and territories, which has 500 years of postal history--from the founding of the modern postal system to the establishment of the world's leading logistics group. However, a few key challenges are yet to be overcome including easy interoperability of services from different providers is a major challenge as only a few standards exist--there are only a few cross-country cross-industry supergrid pilots--full logistics-as-a-service model is yet to be validated. Beyond all these opportunities and challenges, the alarming truth for any logistics company, who stills wants to exist and lead, is that they can't wait for someone else to test the water before they decide to invest. Let me conclude with what I urged the industry experts many years ago during one of the premier 3PL / CSCO Summits in NA, "It's no more about what is the ROI for investing in Technology, it's about what is the price your organization is willing to give (including potential non-existence) by not investing in Technology." Now, innovations and digitalization coupled with globalization are pushing the logistics and supply chain industry to the frontier
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