UK head at C.H. Robinson urges UK plc to be ready for local lockdowns
Nick Ghia, General Manager, North-West Europe at C.H. Robinson, the multi-modal transportation platform provider, is urging businesses across the country to learn lessons from the national lockdown in March as the country braces itself for more restrictions in local areas over the coming months to stem the tide of the coronavirus.
His call comes following reports that more than 36 million people in the UK are living under lockdown restrictions, with more predicted to follow as the number of coronavirus cases are beginning to grow exponentially.
Says Ghia: “More than half the total number of people in the UK are under some sort of lockdown. This isn’t just happening here but also across the world affecting global, national and local supply chains. It’s therefore imperative that businesses across the UK build in new levels of visibility and resilience to their logistics operations to avoid the supply issues that they encountered when the pandemic took hold six months ago.”
He added: “The problem is that too many companies rely on historical data to predict demand and therefore supply. These rules have gone out of the window with the turmoil caused by the pandemic. So, for example, last year’s Christmas trading trends will bear absolutely no relation to the festive period this year.
“Supply chain professionals will have to get use to lockdowns as we continue to fight the coronavirus. That means reviewing their operations to ensure that they have the means to predict the unpredictable so they can circumnavigate whatever is thrown at them. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are no longer a nice to have but a must in order to be in a position to do this. Such technologies will be critical to feeding supply chain critical insights into transport and production systems used by businesses.”
Recently, C.H. Robinson formed an alliance with the Microsoft Corporation to combine the power of its Navisphere multi-modal transportation management platform with the multinational technology company’s Azure cloud platform and Internet of Things. It will create a logistics solution that supports the need for enhanced real time insights and visibility during the pandemic by incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence to support predictive analytics, IOT device monitoring for greater intelligence on products whilst in transit, premier data security and increased application speed.
