Kinaxis recently published a post on 8 digital disruptors that are coming soon to your supply chain. But, at least as far as SI is concerned, hopefully not too soon. While they all pose promise in theory, the reality is that it’s going to be a while before they deliver in practice. And while the doctor doesn’t like having to play the role of the grumpy old man who keeps shouting get your tech off my lawn sometimes he has to as no one else will. The reality is that some developments should stay in the world of sci-fi, at least for now. Let’s take them one by one.

Connected Home

The promise: more insights into customer demands and usage patterns

The reality: the fridge auto re-orders everything the customer buys, even if the customer only bought it to try and hates it, and all the demand signals are double what they should be … there goes your forecasts!

IoT at Retail

The promise: eliminate shelf stock-outs

The reality: the system not only pushes stock to the shelves, but triggers the inventory system to re-order at push levels, which will include one-time peaks as a result of sales and clear-outs, which will result in excess inventory being ordered (and possibly cleared-out later on to a discount seller)

In-store Robotics

The promise: improve customer service with robots

The reality: the robots drive your customers even more insane than those automated telephone systems, because they can’t be hung up on, won’t leave the customer alone, and don’t stop repeating “I don’t understand your inquiry, please repeat” … end result, lost sales, lost robots (when they are punched to bits), and lawsuits (from the customers who break their hands beating up your robots)

Crowdsourced Delivery

The promise: the gig economy delivers faster and cheaper than you ever thought possible

The reality: sometimes it works, but other times packages sit at a pickup site for a week, get damaged, or just go missing – at rates much higher than with traditional delivery services as the crowd-sourced delivery truck skips a pick-up (because it over-committed), as the Big Box Mart delivery employee tosses it in his truck, and as the thief, who signed up to the network under a false id with the overall intent of stealing high value items for sale, makes off with your goods

And yes, the doctor realizes that:

• the re-order bug in the connected home could be fixed, or the system programmed to require user approvals for first-time re-orders, but as the system “learns” and gets good, the user will just trust it
• the IoT Retail system could be alerted of cancelled lines, sale periods, etc. — but without flawless integration, human error will lead to exacerbated error
• the customer service robots could be programmed to understand get lost and get lost, but there will always be an unaccounted for situation (the customer doesn’t speak an expected language, doesn’t speak at all, has a system indecipherable accent, etc.)
• the crowdsourced delivery system could be limited to vetted partners, but isn’t that what carriers are?

None of these technologies are anywhere close to prime time and given all of the current weaknesses in supply chain software and integration between various systems with limited integration options across platforms, this is not a situation that’s going to change overnight.