The sudden onset of the pandemic last March was an enormous challenge for retail supply chains, the ultimate unscheduled resiliency test. One needed to look no further than empty supermarket shelves and the infamous toilet paper shortage that marked the early quarantine days to see just some of the effects such an event had on retail.
Since those dark early days of the crisis, optimizing supply chains and shoring them up against future disruption has become a big priority for many firms. Kearney has teamed up with Silicon Valley supply chain automation firm Aera Technology to support retailers' efforts to bolster their supply chains.
Kearney says its approach is to build a more reactive supply chain with the ability to "sense and pivot" in response to potential disruption, enlisting Aera's Cognitive Operating System into its offering. The platform helps make supply chains more agile by leveraging transactional data into better business decisions that can be automatically implemented as the need arises.
