The world is aflutter discussing how an enormous container ship became an immovable force in the Suez Canal, blocking one of the world’s most vital shipping routes. 120 miles long, the Suez Canal sees nearly 50 ships passing through on an average every day and almost 19,000 annually and accounts for roughly 12% of world trade. During the pandemic, this traffic remained steady until today. A ship, 200 feet wide and 1,300 feet long, nearly taking up the width of the channel, ran aground.
With congested ports across the globe, these delays will rattle the supply chain from ports to docks to distribution centers. Logistics experts are already predicting impacts to goods everywhere and analysts are already predicting potential disruptions to almost $40 billion dollars’ worth of trade.
In a time of massive shortages, the impacts of one the world’s busiest waterways logjammed will cascade across all industries. With recent shortages already halting production in the auto industry, this hiccup will add yet another disruption to ongoing issues. With increased backlogs, the disruption to pricing, fulfillment, demand spikes and labor shortages contribute to a torrent of effects, ultimately impacting consumers. Businesses recognize the gravity of getting ahead through alerts, predictions and collaborate live in situation rooms: they know they need to predict accurately when goods will arrive, what impacts delays cause, and figuring out mitigation options to take swift actions.
Right now, Blue Yonder’s LuminateTM Control Tower is helping our customers track at least 20 vessels along this route and helping them gain early visibility into potential disruptions by predicting the time of arrival at the port of discharge through final delivery. Our platform is, in real time, predicting the impact of this on our customer’s inventory, production capacity and sales. All with the goal of helping our customers take corrective actions to mitigate the impact of this disruption that could span several months.
At Blue Yonder, we can help you build the visibility you need to manage shipments. We’ve purpose built Luminate Control Tower with AI/ML to guide and inform human decision-making. We start with powering end-to-end visibility of your supply chain with insights to see, understand, act, and learn on real-time information from the entire digital ecosystem.
To stay ahead of today’s supply chain complexities, you need to manage what you don’t see, plan for what you don’t know, prioritize resolution options, and execute to align for success. Check out our free, 30-day trial of Luminate Control Tower to learn how real time visibility can help you build resiliency by managing disruptions, instead of just reacting to it.
