Social networking vs. Industry – and how both trends are transforming logistics

 Social networking vs. Industry – and how both trends are transforming logistics

Social networking vs. Industry – and how both trends are transforming logistics

The sharing economy and Industry : the two phenomena share a common origin – at least when it comes to the “Internet of Things” and the “always and everywhere on” mode.

But what exactly is behind the sharing economy, and what are the identifiable or at least conceivable ramifications for logistics and the supply chain? What does Industry  look like from this perspective? And last but not least: what is the relationship between these two movements?

Back to the first question: In virtually every area of modern logistics, someone is trying to provide services or offer added value by sharing resources and forming collaborative networks: transport systems, freight rates, containers, crowd shipping, end-to-end shipping, 3PL services, fleet management, last mile, storage ... a good overview with specific examples can be found in the Collaborative Economy Honeycomb – a kind of map of the social economy with logistics and transport at its very centre. It shows that the times are long gone when only old, established companies offered these services.

In other words, logistics has joined the sharing economy. But how does this relate to Industry ? It is noteworthy that, in the visions of Industry , many areas of the sharing economy are nearly devoid of human beings. Crowd shipping? Replaced by self-driving cars. Quick response to split demand? Big data and predictive shipping manage this in the cloud. And what about inventory tracking? Beacons, sensors, and fully automated replenishment take care of this without human input. Fully integrated and autonomously.

In other words, Industry  is striving to make computers organise and communicate among themselves autonomously without human intervention. The sharing economy points toward a similar development, except here it’s about people, not computers. But the connections between these two areas now seem to be unravelling. They are developing into “parallel societies” – or at least, that’s the danger.

For more about china shipping agent service , please contact kapopklog logistics .