In Transit: What Makes Service Supply Chains Hard To Predict And Manage?

While production supply chains tend to dominate the headlines, there’s an equally crucial but often overlooked area — service supply chains. Managing spare parts, repairs, and services long after a product’s lifecycle can be more challenging and unpredictable than producing the goods themselves. In the latest episode of the In Transit podcast, Vishnu Rajamanickam from The Logistics Report sat down with Navneet Lekshminarayanan, founder and managing director of Holocene, to discuss the intricacies of this lesser-known facet of the industry.

As Lekshminarayanan explains, service supply chains play a vital role in maintaining brand reputation and driving profitability. They’re responsible for ensuring customers remain satisfied with a product long after they’ve made a purchase, handling everything from repairs to managing spare parts. The service supply chain, although lucrative, brings a unique set of challenges that many companies overlook until it’s too late.

One of the key differences between service and production supply chains is the unpredictable nature of demand. While production supply chains can often rely on historical data to predict future needs, service supply chains must grapple with the unknown. How do you anticipate which part will fail, when, and where? Such uncertainty makes demand planning a significant challenge for companies, especially in industries where products have long lifecycles.

Beyond discussing challenges, the conversation revolves around the future of service supply chains and the role of technology. Lekshminarayanan believes the next big breakthrough will come from causal AI, which helps predict future disruptions by understanding the cause-and-effect relationships between various events. While generative AI gets most of the hype these days, he argues that causal AI is what will really transform the way companies navigate black swan events like product recalls or sudden supply disruptions.

The episode wraps up with a discussion on how companies can implement these new technologies into their operations, and why many businesses may need to rethink their approach to supply chain management altogether. Lekshminarayanan offers practical insights into how businesses can stay ahead of the curve, making this podcast a must-listen for anyone looking to future-proof their service supply chain. 

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