Intro

2001 was the very definition of ‘the future’ when I was young. Maybe it was because I was born the same year that Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was released. Maybe because it just sounded so far off - a different millennium. But 2001 came and went without humanity mastering inter-planetary travel or building homicidal Hal-9000 AI systems (thank goodness). Instead, the year 2001 remains etched in people’s memories for different reasons, primarily due to what happened on September 11 of that year. Yet while 2001 may have been a disappointment, the two decades that have passed since then have seen enormous change and disruption. One of the areas that experienced significant changes was in the manufacture, movement, storage and selling of goods.

One of the companies that have experienced these changes is P3 Logistics Parks. Formed in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2001, twenty years later, it has become a top 4 European logistics real estate player with ~6.6 million m² of high-quality warehouse space in 11 European markets. So, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of P3 Logistics Parks, let’s look back at the phenomenal changes that have taken place in the logistics and supply chain industry over the last 20 years and then predict what the next twenty could bring.

 

2001 – 2011: A New Millennium

The first decade of the 21st Century is perhaps more famous for what was introduced rather than what was achieved, for although many transformative innovations were developed, many did not emerge into the mainstream until the 2010s.

The Rise of eCommerce

The internet was still in its infancy, mostly restricted to developed nations and its use constrained by dial-up modems, but it was growing fast. While the fallout of the dot.com boom of 1999 / 2000 had made many investors nervous, entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos remained convinced that eCommerce represented the future for retail. As we now know, he wasn’t wrong.

Amazon's Terrible International Usability and a Proposed ...

Amazon.com website in 2001.

Lean and Green

While the concept of global trade was not new, stretching back to the Viking explorations to the Mediterranean, through to the Great Silk Road that moved goods and spices from Asia to Europe, in the West, most organisations were still vertically integrated and locally focused. However, the actions of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1990s to open the country up to foreign investment and technology allowed western companies to establish manufacturing operations that could utilise its large, hard-working, and critically low-cost labour pool. Then, in 2001, China was allowed to join the WTO, opening their markets and their workforce to western companies. The combination of shipping containers and internet technology now meant that manufacturing didn’t need to be near the customers anymore, enabling China to become deeply integrated into the global value chains of multinational corporations. China went from producing just 3 per cent of global manufacturing output in 1990 to 28.7 per cent in 2019. The complexity of collecting, moving and storing goods from the other side of the world provided a massive boom to the logistics industry, as global exports tripled from $6.5bn in 2000 to $18.3 bn in 2011.[i]

2001 also was the year that the concept of a ‘green supply chain’ first came into being, when the first version of the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard was published.

Supply chain risk management comes into focus

Global supply chains involve global problems, and just because your supplier is out of sight doesn’t mean their risks are. In fact, the more global the supply chain, the more risks it involves. During the mid to late 2000s, a series of new but major logistical and supply chain issues rocked companies that had been dazzled by the savings but hadn’t considered the risks. Toy companies suddenly found lead paint on their toys, food companies found melamine in their baby formula and pet food, logistics companies encountered piracy through the kidnapping of container ships and their crew, and Western manufacturers of everything from tech products to cars found that their supply chains were now exposed to more adverse forces of mother nature than they were used to in Europe. A series of tropical storms, volcanoes and tsunamis caused shortages in critical components, shutting down plants and delaying product launches. Supply chain risk management was suddenly a major subject of concern, and many companies re-evaluated their offshoring aspirations.

The Age of Innovation and Austerity

2007 was a pivotal year in this decade for two reasons: firstly, a revolutionary new technology was introduced that would change consumer behaviour forever, and secondly, a global financial crash would shock the world and cause major restrictions on growth and investment.

On January 9, 2001, Steve Jobs stood on stage at the MacWorld conference and announced that ‘Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything’ and then declared that Apple was introducing three new revolutionary products – a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communication protocol. While the crowd cheered, he then announced the real innovation - all three were contained in a single device called the iPhone. Apple had transformed the phone into a general-purpose and powerful computer that would become an indispensable aspect of 21st life. One that allowed people from across the world to access the entirety of human knowledge from a device they could fit into their pocket. A device that they could also use to buy goods from the new wave of online stores. And so, mobile eCommerce was born, and the logistics industry needed to adapt to accommodate it.

Meanwhile, 2007 also bore witness to an economic crash and recession caused by excessive risk-taking in the financial products industry, especially sub-prime mortgage lending. This led to years of cost-cutting and austerity from governments, central banks and company leaders, stifling investment in innovation. It also accelerated the offshoring and outsourcing revolution as companies looked for ways to recoup losses by cutting costs, providing fresh impetus to the third-party logistics industry.

 

2011 – 2021

Welcome to the Upswing. The Time of Invention

While the downswing years leading up to the global financial crash and its fallout had been defined by efficiency drives and cost-cutting, behind the scenes, a whole host of new logistics and supply chain technologies were being developed. Instrumental in this development were companies such as Amazon, whose belief in eCommerce was being repaid as the spread of the internet, 4G telecommunications and smartphones combined to create a global marketplace. Suddenly, everyone became a potential buyer, every company became a potential supplier, and even medium-sized companies could find customers or suppliers in every country.

Unlike manufacturing, logistics had previously avoided significant automation as human hands were still required to load, unload, put away, pick, pack, and drive. There had been advancements in the world of ERP and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) which improved the scheduling of logistics activities, but their execution was still very much a manual affair. However, almost simultaneously, a whole host of new disruptive innovations emerged that would completely transform the industry. Amazon acquisition of Kiva robotics in 2012 initiated a new warehouse paradigm shift, where instead of the humans walking to the inventory, the inventory travelled to the humans. Since then, logistics has become a hotspot for innovation, specifically when combined with wi-fi technology. Voice-picking, put- and pick-to-light systems, laser-guided robots, autonomous forklifts, ASRS (Autonomous Storage and Retrieval Systems), augmented reality glasses, 2D barcodes, robotic palletisation systems, collaborative robots – the list of new innovations designed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the warehouse operations is extensive.

Rapidly Increasing Consumer Expectations

These advancements were essential due to the continued rise of eCommerce and the fact that companies such as Amazon kept raising the bar in terms of their promised delivery performance. The combination of the internet, eCommerce, smartphones with more advanced planning and scheduling systems meant that customers were getting accustomed to being able to order anything at any time of day – and then for it to be delivered quicker than ever. Three-day delivery with the consumer paying for the shipping rapidly transformed into 48-hour delivery for free, then next day delivery, and now same day and even 4-hour deliveries are promised. 

To make matters worse for retailers and the logistics companies that serve them, now not only could consumers order goods at any time from any device, but they could also choose where the goods should be delivered. So rather than a single linear and fixed cost retail store supply chain, now a variable cost, omnichannel logistics model was required that had to still deliver to stores but also to lockers, click-and-collect locations and the customer’s house. eCommerce also elevated the importance of returns. One of the downsides of buying online is that people cannot try on the goods before purchasing, so the volume of returns increases exponentially. Approximately 56% of online apparel and footwear sales is returned, and 42% of electronic goods.[ii] As a result, returns went from a slight inconvenience to the biggest source of inventory into eCommerce retailer’s warehouses, requiring its own reverse logistics supply chain. 

Autonomous Trucking – Almost, but not quite

To accommodate these new consumer requirements, both the storage and shipment of the goods had to transform as well to keep prices competitive without passing on all the costs to the consumer. This means that people have been looking at ways to eliminate the most expensive aspect of goods movement – the wages of the driver. Ever since Google announced it was developing an autonomous car back in 2009, the concept of autonomous driving and the death of the long-distance lorry driver has been predicted. Yet despite considerable investments in autonomous vehicles and several successful pilots in the US, they have not made it onto the streets of Europe – yet.

Automating the Last Mile

Likewise, drone deliveries remain niche outside of China. What has become established, however, especially in the US and UK, is the use of road robots by companies such as Starship Robotics, which reached 2 million autonomous deliveries in October 2021.[iii]

Timeline

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Starship Robotics autonomous delivery volume over time

However, in most situations, the last mile is still the domain of humans, although the labour force servicing it has changed from full-time employees to mostly temporary gig-workers and zero-hours contract staff.

The Covid Years. 

The emergence of the Sars-Cov-2 virus in March 2020 led to restrictions and societal changes that have had an enormous impact on the logistics industry, mainly through an acceleration of all the previous factors. Lockdowns and homeworking led to an explosion in eCommerce – especially for grocery – and led to the rise of dark stores and ghost kitchens that exist to only service online orders.

One thing that COVID did highlight is the importance of logistics and supply chains to the global economy. The combination of a series of supply chain shocks such as the Suez Canal blockage and global delivery driver shortage has made the supply chain a mainstream news topic. These shocks and their impact have reinforced to logistics companies and the manufacturers they serve the need to (a) de-risk their supply chains, (b) improve responsiveness, (c) improve resilience, (d) decrease their carbon footprint.

Following the 2021 COP 26 meeting in Glasgow, ESG and a more circular supply chain has gone from a nice-to-have to mission-critical. This increased focus on sustainability and carbon emissions has also led companies to look again at localising their supply chain and reducing lead times and points of failure through reshoring and nearshoring. Companies are looking at automation to achieve this localisation without incurring a significant increase in labour costs, which is likely to drive a logistics automation investment boom in the coming decade. 

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The Next Two Decades

Enough about the past twenty years - that is all known history. To enable companies to plan effectively for what is sure to continue to be a turbulent short-term future, let’s now look at what I believe the next twenty years have in store for the logistics and supply chain industry.

I believe that five interconnected macro-factors will dictate the future for the logistics and supply chain industry over the next 20 years:

  1. Sustainability. Increased global pressure from governments, shareholders, and consumers to improve the sustainability of the supply chain and significantly reduce the carbon footprint. This will create pressure to reduce the number of long-haul, high carbon transit methods and look to generate more sustainably powered vehicles for all short-haul distribution. It will also drive investment in more renewable forms of energy production such as hydrogen and nuclear fusion.
  2. Localisation. The post-pandemic supply chain crisis that has emerged, combined with the desire for both greater sustainability and reliability in the supply of critical items, will cause a rapid acceleration in the nearshoring and reshoring of supply chains.
  3. Personalisation.  There will continue to be increased demand for ever-more personalised goods, creating the need for on-demand (but sustainable) manufacturing.
  4. Automation. To handle these supply chain challenges will require massive investments by both companies and countries. From a country perspective, significant investment in upgrading ports, roads, and rail will be necessary while also investing in new transit methods such as sustainable powered regional and short-haul air transport and tube logistics systems. From a company perspective, this means restructuring and de-risking their supply chains and investing in warehouse and logistics automation and advanced analytical and predictive AI capabilities.
  5. Digitisation.  A combination of 5G, the IoT, and Edge computing combine to enable the supply chain to be recreated in real-time in the digital world. Stores and consumers are also increasingly exploring the Metaverse, creating whole new digital identities in this virtual world. A digital land grab takes place as brands compete for digital real estate. Logistics companies must find a way to connect to this digital world to deliver what was ordered in the virtual world in the real one.

Let’s look now at the next twenty years at a more micro level, starting with the next five.  

 

2021 – 2026

Automation Acceleration

The next five years will effectively see the widespread implementation of the innovations that emerged throughout the last decade and will serve to perfectly demonstrate Amara’s Law that “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

The global driver shortage that emerged post-COVID, and the resultant rise in wages to retain and attract human drivers, will incentivise massive investment in the development and adoption of automation across the end-to-end supply chain. DHL predicts that there will be 600,000 logistics robotics in use within global supply chains by 2022. These will include:

  • Autonomous ports and autonomous container storage
  • An explosion in warehouse automation, ASRS systems and smart manufacturing robotics
  • Increase in collaborative robots and other manufacturing automation
  • Begin to see the increased use of exoskeletons to support and enhance the performance of human workers. Think Ripley from Aliens.
  • The mass expansion of last-mile innovations such as road robots and drones
  • The much-anticipated rollout of automated vehicles. By 2026, we should expect to see ‘port to fulfilment centre’ deliveries undertaken using autonomous vehicles, at least in the US and Western Europe.

Adjusting to a New Normal

Many of the temporary practices that emerged during the COVID pandemic have permanently changed society and the supply chain that supports it. Same day delivery is now expected for most items, resulting in an increase in demand for urban logistics locations to meet these demands. The number of online-only ‘dark stores’ increases as major retailers move into the space. Warehouse automation and road robots are used to reduce the cost of picking, packing and moving goods. The IoT ‘smart revolution’ continues as more home devices become connected to the web.

Most major stores now become urban, omnichannel logistics hubs that contain automated warehouse facilities to supply both online and physical ordering and returns. Vertical, urban farming becomes more commonplace in most towns and cities, and a new supply chain emerges specifically to service the movements of the crops grown in them.

Hybrid working stays the norm, resulting in a reduction in demand for office space but an increase in demand for multi-use spaces. City centres have become increasingly pedestrianised, and leisure continues to become a larger part of people’s lives with an increase in demand for local gyms, bars, restaurants, and social places. 

From Data to Decision-Driven

To manage the complexity of this personalised, automated and local supply chain, massive investments in AI-based supply chain management systems and control towers that use machine learning (ML) algorithms to model scenarios, undertake route scheduling, predict bottlenecks and prescribe remedial actions.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, more than 50% of supply chain organisations will use ML to augment decision-making capability. As the volume, variety, velocity and variability of data hitting a business increase, supply chain decision making will outstrip the capabilities of humans, and ‘gut feeling’ and experience will make way for a more fact-based capability enhanced by artificial intelligence. Machines will increasingly be trusted to act as well as predict.

We should also see the blockchain move from its current pilot project status to widespread adoption, providing a substantial increase in goods provenance and security while correspondingly dramatically reducing the vast amount of paper documentation in the supply chain.

Opportunities to create greater connectivity and visibility into the supply chain will increase, specifically as the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more widespread as the 5G telecommunication network expands across Europe. This will lead to many manufacturers creating a digital twin of their supply chains, connected to a digital brain that remembers all of transactions and movements, the decisions made, and the outcomes it caused. This digitisation of the supply chain will enable the growth of Supply Chain as a Service (SCaaS), providers who utilise these AI systems and who develop core competence in the analytical skills needed to operate a digital supply chain, allowing companies to focus on their core competencies and differential.

Business leaders will converse with these new AI systems using natural language and receive voice-based recommendations, and by 2026 some of the leading organisations will consider their decision intelligence system as a member of the Board. 

Sustainability Speeds Up

The ramping up of pressure to create a more sustainable and circular economy will increase over the next five years, with an increased push for renewable power and increasingly punitive penalties for diesel haulage vehicles. The carbon cost per tonne will continue to rise, and pressure to report more frequently on emissions will lead to carbon emissions affecting the balance sheet and a company’s logistics decisions.

The electric charging network will expand exponentially across Europe due to an increase in demand for electric vehicles (EV), and by 2026 we should also see the first commercial electric and hydrogen-powered trucks hit the road. To provide the power for these electric vehicles, expect to see logistics facilities and parks increasingly develop their own solar and wind-powered micro-grid networks to generate and store their own energy and provide fast-charging facilities to distribute it.

National governments, concerned about energy insecurity as well as climate change, will start to invest heavily into clean fuel sources such as hydrogen and nuclear fusion. The amount of government interest in new forms of goods transportation will also dramatically increase, as will their willingness to invest in significant logistics infrastructure projects such as tube logistics networks. The multi-billion-euro Swiss ‘Cargo sous terrain’ project is a good example.[iv]

The Air starts to turn Green

By 2026 the first commercial short-haul electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) flights by companies such as Volocopter and Uber are completed. Test flights of hybrid-electric air transport will also be successfully completed, able to carry payloads of up to 5 tonnes. This brings vast amounts of investment to companies such as Faradair, allowing them to move their aircraft from prototype to mass production. 

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Volocopter eVTOL over Neom.[v]                     

To facilitate the move to this new form of regional electric air travel, a series of dedicated air hubs will be built in, or near to, cities, as well as in the major ports and logistics parks, allowing for fast, clean and efficient transportation of both people and goods.[vii]

 

2026 – 2031

Keeping your Promises

Incentivised by the multitude of pledges by both governments and corporations back in 2021 to become carbon neutral by 2030, the end of the decade sees a massive drive to prove their sustainability credentials. Most European countries have made significant headway into reducing their dependency on carbon-based energy sources, with major wind, solar and tidal projects completed.

While the perennial joke about fusion power is that it’s always 30 years away, recent advancements in AI help researchers finally establish how to safely scale nuclear fusion and generate more energy than it consumes. The first commercial spherical Tokamak nuclear fusion reactors reach a milestone by generating more power than they consume, using high-temperature superconducting magnets that can confine fusion fuel at hundreds of millions of degrees.

Transportation Revolution

All logistics movements in developed countries must be undertaken using carbon-neutral methods from 2030, and ICE vehicles are banned from inner cities. There are punitive penalties in place to ensure compliance and to eliminate the sale of any internal combustion engine (ICE) logistics and personal transportation vehicles. Hydrogen-powered road vehicles are also moving into mainstream production, and to support this a hydrogen recharging network is being established across Europe.  

To accelerate the journey to net-zero, many governments fund a series of tube logistics projects specifically to take logistics movements off the road. 2031 sees the completion of the first section of the Cargo sous terrain project, linking the main distribution centres around the village of Härkingen-Niederbipp to the Zurich metropolitan area.

Japan and China have also completed their long-awaited Maglev train projects, allowing people and goods to traverse their countries at 600 KMh, faster than air transit. The development in magnet technology for Maglev creates tremendous cross-over opportunities in nuclear fusion and underground logistics movements.

Autonomous vehicles have now become accepted and are an increasingly common sight throughout the developed nations. Most countries now have their own Gigafactories producing new forms of solid-state batteries to meet the demands of a motor industry being fast weaned off fossil fuels.[viii] Facial recognition and biometric identification systems are now commonplace features in vehicles, preventing them from being stolen and driven away. Human drivers are increasingly obsolete in these countries but still exist in nations with lesser developed infrastructure. Rather than focusing on driving, now human passengers accompany goods purely to focus on improving customer service, merchandising and product.

Short-haul bio-electric air freight is now proven and established. The first hydrogen planes have been successfully piloted and a wider roll-out is planned. eVTOL air transit systems commence commercial goods deliveries, moving items between out-of-town fulfilment centres to more local hubs, and eVTOL air taxis are established in China, Japan, Dubai and Saudi Arabia (in the Neom future city). Plans exist to extend this to the major European cities. Autonomous ships and autonomous planes also complete successful pilots and maiden voyages, many using hydrogen fuel sources.[ix]

The use of autonomous vehicles has had several profound effects on the logistics industry. Transportation is increasing acquired as a service in both the consumer and business world. The concept of owning a car or truck that is not utilised most of the time makes little sense. The move to hybrid working and advancements in holographic capabilities means that most people no longer commute to an office, so private sales plummet while fleet sales soar. Corporations also procure transportation as a service, paying for the volume moved and space utilised. The removal of the driver caused the costs to dive, so owning a vehicle does not make economic sense anymore.

The use of autonomous vehicles and the fact that transport is now a service has removed the need for car parking spaces in city centres. As a result, this space is redeveloped as accommodation, retail and urban logistics centres. Some become autonomous car charging points, where the fleet owned vehicles return to recharge when not in use. Underground car parks are especially well-suited to being repurposed as a recharging station, or as an urban warehouse or a tube logistics hub.

The last mile is also pretty much automated, with road robots and drone deliveries now commonplace. Many urban logistics centres facilitate drone and road robot dispatch and recharging.

The Visible Supply Chain

Blockchain is now a well-established technology, and most governments insist on blockchain traceability of items to prevent fraud, ensure provenance, and increase the sustainability of every item. The blockchain enables governments to track and trace goods movements more effectively, and goods become taxed based on their environmental footprint.

The movements of goods are recorded on the blockchain automatically, and each block’s creation and modification are communicated seamlessly with AI systems that plan, schedule and execute goods procurement, storage and distribution.

The Connected, Circular and Cognitive Supply Chain

By 2031 most supply chains will be self-driving, controlled by AI-based decision intelligence systems that sense and respond to demand deviations and supply issues automatically. Advancements in manufacturing techniques such as additive manufacturing combined with advances in intelligent robotics remove the remaining benefits of low-cost labour sources. The increased focus on ESG leads to the development of more circular supply chains, with dedicated facilities set up to handle the return, recycling, repair and refurbishment of products.

Manufacturing now takes place close to consumers in combined logistics and manufacturing centres, and the IoT has been used to connect every node in the supply chain. For example, most physical retail stores (yes, they still exist) have beacons outside them that allow for the receiving of GPS data from phones and the sending of localised and personalised offers to passing customers. As a result of all of this collected data, companies will truly know their consumers, where they live, where they go, and what they want.

Controlling this increasingly autonomous fleet of logistics vehicles proves to be a challenge, and the power of quantum computing is used to manage city-wide traffic control systems. Quantum computing powered control systems become increasingly necessary as 6G is launched and powers the next generation of Edge cloud computing systems, enabling speeds of 1Tbps while reducing the data bandwidth and latency to a fraction of what it was back in 2021. This allows every device, from traffic lights to road signals, to be installed with intelligent two-way sensors that can control usage and communicate with other connected devices such as autonomous cars. Waiting at traffic lights for ages becomes a thing of the past.

Human control of the supply chain is limited to decision-makers who are fed insights and predictions by Intelligence Automation systems. Recent developments in Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) such as Musk’s Neuralink have proven that a human-machine connection is possible, and that people can control and communicate with machines using only their thoughts. A race ensures to provide employee-machine interfaces that allow humans to interact with the supply chain via their minds.

 

2031 – 2041

Self-aware, self-driving, sustainable.

Twenty years from now and the human-centric supply chains of today will have become a distant memory.

The focus on ESG factors will have moved from a nice to have, to an important factor to conder alongside cost, profit and revenue, to the point where it becomes central to how business gets done.

Diagram

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Supply chains have become almost organic, operating almost independently as an intelligent, connected, self-driving, self-learning system. Procurement, manufacture, storage, transportation and installation are all handled autonomously, controlled by artificial intelligence systems that receive real-time data feeds from every node, SKU and mode of transport. Goods movements are planned, tracked, and adjusted by AI systems that operate in real-time, all the time. Nearly all supply chain movements are now recorded on the blockchain, ensuring that the provenance and sustainability of every item are always traceable.

Tube logistics projects are now underway in most European nations, creating a network of underground tunnels that connect and feed a series of fulfilment and distribution centres along the routes. Major projects are underway to establish links between the ports and these fulfilment centres, while smaller tube logistics projects are being implemented in many Western cities that link these fulfilment centres to urban hubs, removing vast amounts of traffic from the roads.

Almost all goods movement is now autonomous and powered by renewable energy, from long-haul to last mile. Short-haul emissions-free air transport from electric and hydrogen planes are well-established, and the majority of short to mid-distance air freight is now completed via autonomous, carbon-neutral means. Longer-haul emissions-free sea and air transport have also commenced. As a result of these developments, the cost of goods movement has plummeted from its 2021 level, costing just cents per mile to move goods. The concept of paying a human to drive goods or people is now a relic in most developed nations.

Autonomous long haul passenger transport also started. New types of hydrogen-fuelled aircraft have been developed to handle longer trips. By the end of the 2040s, 50% of ocean-going freight is moved using autonomous sea vessels, increasingly powered by hybrid-electric or hydrogen fuel engines.

Tokamak nuclear fusion reactors will have been proven to be safe, clean and stable. Most developed countries now have their own fusion programmes in place, desperate to create independent, safe and sustainable energy for their citizens and usher in a new generation of limitless, carbon-free power. These successful fusion pilots also start a new space race to harvest the vast amounts of Helium-3 that covers the bedrock of the moon.

Quantum computing is used to manage the complexity of the global supply chain, monitoring and managing the movements of autonomous ships, planes and trucks from automated manufacturing plants into automated warehouses and onwards into micro-fulfilment centres and consumer homes.

Brain-computer interfaces are now becoming well-established. Supply chain teams are effectively connected to the supply chain, receiving information in real-time and able to receive data inputs directly from any node.

 

Conclusion

The last twenty years have seen significant changes to the world of logistics and supply chain. Its speed, scale, scope, volume, complexity and level of automation has all exponentially increased. Yet if you were to take a logistics worker from 2001 – be that a planner, warehouse operative or driver – and transport them to 2021, they would, after a bit of retraining, still be able to perform their jobs and find employment.

It is doubtful that a current supply chain or logistics worker who was transported forward to 2041 would be able to say the same. They would find little to compare their current job to, as most of the work would now be performed by intelligent machines.

Entirely new jobs will have emerged, however, and advancements in technology will enable humans to live a more sustainable, green and harmonious life, supported by a supply chain that is constantly humming away in the background, sourcing, making and delivering goods seamlessly and efficiently. The logistics parks – and the companies that reside in them – will also have to adapt to accommodate this new supply chain reality.

The future for logistics is likely to be disruptive and ever-changing – but so incredibly exciting.