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The Descartes Systems Group, Inc. | www.descartes.com | Surviving the Supply Chain and Logistics Workforce Challenge
Strategies, tactics and technology to improve supply chain
and logistics productivity
Descartes' study How Bad Is The Supply Chain and Logistics Workforce Challenge? showed that 76% of respondents
are facing notable workforce shortages in their supply chain and logistics operations. Most companies have grappled
with this issue since mid-2020 when economies started to pick up during the pandemic and it has persisted, even
as many economies continue to perform better than expected post-pandemic. So, there has been considerable time
for organizations to develop strategies, tactics and technological approaches to mitigate the impact of a continuing
tight market for supply chain and logistics laborers, knowledge workers and managers. Here's what supply chain and
logistics leaders said:
Worker productivity
The top organizational strategy overall to improve worker productivity was to automate non-value-added and
repetitive tasks (54%), which speaks to the many functions in supply chain and logistics that are routine and non-
integrated, requiring manual intervention. Comingling operations and centralization were next (50%) and points
to finding synergy in consolidating duplicate functions across business units to create scale and efficiency more
effectively. Automating non-value-added and repetitive tasks increased to 60% for industry-leading financial
performance organizations and dropped to 36% for financially below-average ones. This indicates that better
financial performers are more willing to take on the more contentious aspects of consolidation to get to a higher
performing organization. From a country perspective, France was the highest for automation (62%), Belgium/
Netherlands for comingling (64%) and the U.S. for centralization (56%).
54
%
50
%
50
%
7
%
Automate non-value added and repetitive tasks
Co-mingling operations with other divisions to create scale and synergy
Centralization (e.g., centralized planning)
None of the above
What organizational strategies and tactics is your
organization using to improve worker productivity?
