The process of managing a product’s lifecycle has come a long way since the days of Excel spreadsheets. Or has it? In this episode of Supply Chain Radio, Stan Pryzbylinski, vice president of research at CIMdata joins Matt Gunn and Jenny Reese to discuss how PLM software has evolved in the world of manufacturing.

Over the past decade, businesses have increasingly relied on contract manufacturing and outsourced supply chain services to make and move the goods they sell. Today, $751 billion in goods are produced and imported from offshore trading partners into the US. Meanwhile, US logistics costs amount to nearly $1.15 billion—or 7.7% of the US GDP. Many manufacturers and retailers rely on a vast network of both production and logistics partners to keep the supply chain moving.

With so many dollars at stake, inefficiencies anywhere in the supply chain can have an impact on a company’s bottom line. Extra overhead at the top of the supply chain can easily cascade, affecting costs all the way down the supply chain. Which is why successful manufacturers and retailers are evolving the way they do business, rather than allowing problems to shift elsewhere in their supply chain network. Read on to learn what manufacturers and retailers can do today to help keep their entire end-to-end supply chain operating at peak efficiency

Is your omni-channel strategy killing employee morale?

After a year that saw unexpected innovations, disruptions, and new policies and tariffs, can we truly predict what’s ahead for the global supply chain in 2019? We’ll certainly try. In the final episode of 2018, Matt Gunn and Guy Courtin gaze into the crystal ball to gauge what the near future will bring to the world of supply chain, and whether businesses are better prepared to sense and respond to the many unexpected changes that happen each day.

Digital technology is changing the world, one industry at a time. With these changes comes a reimagining of the supply chain, from the systems businesses use to communicate and interact, to the strategies they deploy to move goods around the world.

Digitalization gives rise to new business models, in which real-time connectivity, greater visibility, reactivity, and anticipation become the underlying characteristics of our supply chains. But this kind of change isn’t easy, and transformation doesn’t happen overnight.

By taking a staged approach to digital transformation, and building greater connectivity across the supply chain, businesses can pave the way toward a fully connected future, while still being able to tackle the biggest challenges they face right now.