Deloitte Belgium: the AI powered digital supply network
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Deloitte Belgium leverages cognitive technology to help companies think big, start small and scale fast WRITTEN BY
HARRY MENEAR PRODUCED BY
CHARLOTTE CLARKE
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DELOITTE BELGIUM
Kevin Overdulve, Director in Logistics & Distribution at Deloitte Belgium, shares his insight into how the disruptive power of AI is shaping the autonomous supply chains of tomorrow
F
rom the invention of the steam engine and new ironworking processes to the microchip and the nuclear reactor, the
first three industrial revolutions have each recast the world in a new mould. Now, as the world 04
plunges into a fourth transformation, driven by disruptive technologies, hyper-connectivity and customer-centric new business models, looking back across the past 260 years can grant valuable direction into the shape of tomorrow. The trends defining Industry 4.0 are reflected in the impetus that fuelled the First Industrial Revolution at the close of the 18th century: harnessing new innovations in order to increasingly improve and automate the work carried out by human labour. Previously, digitisation was a process that focused on automating manual tasks, “transactions” if you will, but according to Kevin Overdulve, Director in Supply Chain & Network Operations at Deloitte Belgium, technological advances are on track to take automation to the next stage. “Since the beginning of the 1990s, we’ve seen companies
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“ We’re seeing a shift towards more cognitive automation and artificial intelligence” 06
— Kevin Overdulve, Director in Logistics & Distribution, Deloitte Belgium
explore the realm of transactional automation, which led to the increased adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, basically to do the things that human beings were doing on a piece of paper, but then better, faster and more cost-effective,” he says. “Now, we’re seeing a shift towards cognitive automation leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), where today’s human decision-making processes are automated.” Ultimately, Overdulve sees this trend resulting in the genesis of the autonomous digital supply network, whereby the siloed supply chain functions of today will evolve towards a network of connections between plan, source, make and deliver, as well as adjacent business functions, all enabled by a digital core. We sat down with him to discuss this evolution: “We see that companies are moving much more towards figuring out how to make their supply network an integral part of their value proposition to customers, by taking a differentiated approach towards new ways of competitive advantage,” he notes. Overdulve’s fascination with the delicate interplay of factors in the
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘DIGITAL SUPPLY NETWORKS: THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF SUPPLY CHAINS’ 07 modern supply network began years
it’s so dependent on business strategy
before his career at Deloitte Belgium.
and choice of differentiation,” he
He recalls being captivated while
explains. “Because supply chains are
walking around warehouses and
complex systems in which optimisation
visiting harbours, observing how goods
across all angles is a true challenge –
flowed in coordinated (or not so coordi-
if even possible – you typically need
nated) ways from A to B. Always on
to look into making several trade-offs:
the leading edge of optimisation
‘do you prefer to hold onto stock
and innovation, the dynamic world
to maximise operational efficiencies
of consulting had Overdulve hooked
or do you follow a lean, small batch
from the start, quickly realising that
approach? Do you value service at
his passion resides in supply chain
additional supply chain cost? How do
management. “There’s no one-size-
we choose what we want our supply
fits-all answer to finding the right
chain to look like?’ That complexity
supply chain for a company, because
was very interesting to me.” w w w.de l o it te. b e
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CLICK TO WATCH : ‘MANUFACTURING PROCESS INDUSTRIES CAPITALIZE ON DIGITAL SUPPLY NETWORKS’ 10
Helping Deloitte’s customers
we advise clients on how to adopt
navigate that complexity is at the heart
more of a pull perspective and listen
of Overdulve’s current role, a quest he
to the customer’s needs and wants.”
believes is fundamentally guided by
By listening to what Deloitte’s clients’
the need to put the customer at the
customers truly value in the supply
epicentre of the question. “For a lot of
chain service they receive, which
companies, their supply chain is the
eventually drives (part of) their buying
final connection point to the customer,”
decision, Overdulve maintains
he points out. “What I find intriguing is
companies can tune and reconfigure
the idea that, instead of taking a ‘push’
their supply chains – plural – in order
perspective from a supply chain point
to turn it into a source of competitive
of view and saying ‘this is our supply
advantage. He notes that, with
chain, these are our capabilities: this is
increasingly demanding customers,
the service we offer our customers’,
there are three major conclusions from
the customer studies performed by
gain greater insight in the way how their
Deloitte across several industries:
supply chain actually operates, giving
“In a lot of the B2B, or B2B2C environ-
rise to opportunities related to
ments, reliability is really the number
efficiency, rapid responsiveness and
one service expectation and, if you
lower amounts of capital employed.
can excel at that, it really gives you
Digital transformation is supporting
a competitive edge; the second one
all three of these observations, but
is flexibility, with customers wanting
particularly the third factor. Adding
to be able to change orders or service
the AI component to the equation, the
requirements depending on the
ability to analyse and create actionable
situation at hand; and the third one is
insights from disparate and sizeable
the visibility and transparency element.”
data sets drives a new wave of
This visibility component is not only
designing, planning and operating the
a customer demand. For most of
supply network of tomorrow. Overdulve
Deloitte’s clients it is a key enabler to
sees AI as an enabler of a future where
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Kevin Overdulve Kevin is a leader in Deloitte’s global Supply Chain practice, with 13 years of experience advising multinational clients on supply chain strategy, Logistics & Distribution, and Digital Supply Networks. He works across industries, with the majority of his clients residing in the CPG and manufacturing industry. Before his current tenure of eight years at Deloitte, he worked for other global consultancies, always with a focus on supply chain management. Kevin holds a M.Sc. Business Engineering and an MBA in Supply Chain Management.
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Approximate number of employees 14 the supply network ceases to be a linear, siloed, one–size–fits– all structure, and becomes an interconnected, collaborative, customer-centric, and above all responsive network running across an industry’s value chain. “Where I see major advances at this point in time is clients having established the ability to retrieve real-time data from internal and external source systems, to provide user-centric visibility and the ability to identify exceptions at the spot, and to offer supply chain improvement suggestions to supply chain professionals – which
improve over time as machine learning helps to perfect courses of action to avoid the negative consequences of supply chain deviations, eventually enabling an autonomous supply chain function,” Overdulve explains. “ERPs tend to be set up in a customised manner, creating hundreds of reports to manage execution, still transactional in nature, with supply chain professionals needing to plough their way through them in order to gain insights. By the time the insight, let alone the remediation action to be undertaken, is found you’re most likely too late and the negative effect of the disruption has already happened.” Overdulve believes in platform technologies that combine crawler technology – extracting and indexing large supply chain data sets to build your company’s supply network “memory” – and the power of AI – breaking silos in favour of the best supply chain response to exceptions – to augment the supply chain workforce of the future. “Let’s take the robot out of the human and allow supply chain professionals to focus on value-adding activities,” he says. “It’s the reason I’m working alongside w w w.de l o it te. b e
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several promising startups, which are developing technology I believe does this very well, making real-time copies of our company’s data, which is constantly and incrementally updated to ensure a supply chain professional can receive always retrieve the most current visibility on supply chain operations.” Of course, applying cutting-edge technology with a modern, digital transformation mindset means adopting an approach that is at odds with those that businesses have traditionally employed. “At Deloitte, our 16
tagline on how to do digital transformation is to ‘think big, start small and scale
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘DIGITAL SUPPLY NETWORKS TRANSFORMING OPERATIONS FOR OIL, GAS, AND CHEMICALS’
changing at an increasing pace, is much more agile, acknowledging the lessons learned from failure and the need for rapid adoption and adaptation. “The ‘think big’ phase is about envisioning the art of the possible of what a company’s future supply network could look like, which technologies it needs to explore to realise this vision and which are the most apparent supply chain areas to tackle in light of continuous business challenges. We create a constantly evolving roadmap for the company. Then, the ‘start small’ element involves us solving a specific business issue, rather than trying to boil the ocean. We take one of the core fast’,” Overdulve explains. “It’s a
use cases that could drive benefit for a
different mentality compared to the
company, we match that with the right
waterfall mentality that was prevalent
technology to solve the challenge, and
before. Previously, when you went
we do a pilot. Finally, the ‘scale fast’
through large scale-supply chain
part is about finding other areas where
transformations, you went off for a year
the solution prototype can be leveraged
to design the solution, then two years
to create momentum at scale and start
to build it, another year to test it. Then,
expanding the technology for adoption
four or five years later, it actually went
across the company.”
live. By the time you put it live, everything
Overdulve sees AI as the defining
has changed so much that you might
characteristic of the supply networks
wonder whether the solution is even
of the future. “It’s completely changing
still relevant.” Deloitte’s approach to
the way we can manage supply chains
digital innovation, in a world that is
in the realm of moving towards w w w.de l o it te. b e
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autonomous supply networks,” he explains. He further argues that “the autonomous supply network trend has the ability to turn how we define supply chain, or network, upside down. Do you still need periodic planning capabilities if your supply network self-regulates itself? Which organisation and skills are needed to operate the autonomous supply network? “I have two top priorities right now: one is helping companies understand the potential of cognitive automation
“ Think big, start small and scale fast” — Kevin Overdulve, Director in Logistics & Distribution, Deloitte Belgium
and available technologies in the 18
supply network, to help them gradually enter the world of the cognitive – and by extension, autonomous – supply PA R T N E R S
Valued relationships Deloitte has been acknowledged consecutively by Manhattan Associates as Global Partner of the Year, and has been working across 100+ implementations globally to deliver best of breed WMS, TMS and OMS solutions across industries and sectors.
Llamasoft is a leading provider of Supply Chain Design software. Deloitte has been leveraging its technology for years to bring the latest customer-centric supply chain designs to its most respected clients.
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network. I think that’s probably the
identify and adopt the new attitudes
biggest thing that will happen in the
and methodologies that will allow them
next couple of years in terms of
to remain agile and thrive in an
transformation in my field of expertise.
ecosystem that changes more rapidly
The second is more around strategic
with each passing day.
supply chain design, and how you evaluate different supply chain archetypes in light of continuously evolving customer needs.� To maximise the benefits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, companies will need to not only make the most of the emerging technologies in the field, but to explore, w w w.de l o it te. b e
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