Global supply chains that were broken by the pandemic are still in chaos. These problems will be with us for a while, because of market imbalances and because the just-in-time global outsourcing model no longer works for most companies and their customers.
Ants use a structured and decentralized approach to find the shortest path between food and nest. Moreover, they dynamically adjust if obstacles appear en route. Each ant makes its own decisions while staying in active communication with fellow ants. Ant colonies have scouts that examine the environment around the nest and leave scents to mark the route they took. The scout who finds the shortest way to the food source is the first one to return to the group. Other ants take notice, adapt, and follow the more efficient route. Ant behavior, honed over billions of years, is a potential key to solving today’s supply chain problems.
There are many dynamically moving parts in every supply chain. For each part, there is a business process, a large amount of data, communication protocols and decisions to be made that can impact the entire operation of the supply chain. A decision made at a functional or physical node can have significant impact on all the other nodes as well as the whole performance of the system.
Modern supply chains require a system of distributed “ants” or robotic and automated processes that can detect relevant issues and make decisions that impact the rest of the system. In other words, to maximize the performance of modern supply chains and avoid disruptions, distributed and dynamic systems similar to how ants operate, are needed.
Distributed approaches have advantages of scalability and intelligence, dynamically changing and expanding as the physical world changes. Such approaches are a major improvement to most current supply chains which are big, centralized, distant, inefficient and suffer from data and decision latency.
Nature has a lot to offer companies when it comes to optimization and efficient systems. In nature, survival is often dependent on utilizing highly optimized processes and systems. When it comes to supply chains, survival can also be dependent on implementing the best approaches and systems.