IoT for Supply Chain: the lessons of the webinar conducted by France Supply Chain and Wavestone

Some see it as a project, others as a concrete project, and the last as a source of questions. The IoT for Supply Chain has been attracting the interest of the sector for many years. On the occasion of the "Rencontres du Digital", the ASLOG/FRANCE SUPPLY CHAIN and the consulting firm Wavestone returned to the subject through a dedicated webinar.

The crisis will have proved it. Despite its resilience, the supply chain still needs to develop its velocity, i.e. its agility and efficiency, to function optimally despite the disruptions. And to do this, the IoT is proving to be a powerful tool. Marc Dauga and Pierre-Yves Audoy, respectively Partner Supply Chain and Manager Manufacturing at Wavestone, and Francois Martin-Festa, VP Digital Customer Experience at Schneider Electric and Head of the Digital Lab at Aslog/France Supply Chain, led a dedicated webinar on this topic on June 24.

The objective? To share the keys to asking the right questions and making the right choice of dedicated solutions. " Above all, it is essential to start from a business need, to frame it, to feed a precise specification and to know the ecosystem of the players in order to choose the one best suited to your needs," emphasizes Marc Dauga after recalling the main principles of the IoT for supply chain, namely the collection and analysis of data from an IoT object placed on a handling unit (pallets, racks, bins, products).

Tobetter understand
the technological bricks related to IoT

The three experts are unanimous in their view that conducting an IoT project can be complex. The first difficulty is the growing number of players offering their services. Marc Dauga notes "a 60% growth in five years in the number of start-ups in the sector. ». The second challenge is to understand and get to know the technology, which is evolving very quickly. In addition to continuous technological progress, Marc Dauga identifies 3 major breakthroughs: the 5G network, nano satellite and edge computing. As for the technological building blocks, they can be divided into four:

• The IoT object, its lifespan, its cost, its conditions of use and its collection and storage capacity.
• The network and data transport and the need to think about the distance between the object and the network, the data rate, the energy consumption and the precision objectives of geolocation.

• The IoT platform and its hosting location, its management of the life cycle of dedicated objects, its ability to integrate new types, to manage an increase in the volume of data and the number of APIs it can provide.
• Data application for use cases, i.e. web interface as well as supply chain tools such as TMS, WMS, MES...

Identify and choose the right partner(s)
to optimize your supply chain with IoT

Once carefully selected and mastered, these bricks give rise to an IoT solution that addresses use cases with a virtuous impact on the transformation of the supply chain. Marc Dauga discusses product tracking (outdoor or indoor), product tracing, but also improving efficiency through inventory management, maintenance or even the piloting of the energy performance of buildings. And to best choose its service providers and partners in the start-up of an IoT project, Wavestone has identified about 50 French start-ups operating in the business, only on the BtoB market, with at least eight years of existence and less than 50 employees. "These elements provide the keys to asking the right questions, to better segment a project according to the 4 major dimensions of the IoT and to draw up a complete panorama of French start-ups on this subject", Francois Martin-Festa concludes.

The Wavestone-France Supply Chain white paper and radar are available on the website