RPA in supply chain management

DISSERTATION – Proposal

Title: Contemporary Supply Chain Management – A qualitative study on new trends, challenges and more scopes, which specializes in the RPA prospects in the whole process.

I am planning to research about the innovative technologies in the whole supply chain cycle that is the new trends and new practices which have been developed in recent years in the supply chain sector. For my research I have chosen a UK model supply chain, specifically I am planning to take two or more companies (Subway, Sainsbury’s, Amazon, Tesco, TCS, Shell and Accenture). My motto is to learn the contemporary supply chain in depth and also find constructive ways to implement new technology practices in the whole cycle to improve overall performance. I am also planning to have a brief look about the future possible developments in the supply chain industry and gaps in the current process as well. I will be more specific about the benefits of implementing the advanced tools like RPA, AI and also I will be discussing 5G, but the main focus will be about the RPA possibilities. Additionally I will be looking into the challenges that may come up in the practical implication of the new practices over their traditional methods.

Background:

Even though the Supply Chain Management has been well developing in the past two decades, the contemporary supply chain moves are notably prodigious. The Covid-19 pandemic has proven to the world the importance of an accelerated supply chain network. More and more people started relying on online purchase and contact-less deliveries even for their basic needs. Regardless of the inflation that happened because of the unavailability of goods and struggles to move the things around, the online businesses were perceiving an unforeseen demand where more and more people started getting attracted to the convenience and safety. People have adapted to this new comfort and are less likely to turn back to direct shopping even after the pandemic ends. I was thinking about the ways to improve the current process and I was reading about all new possibilities. I have realized that the technologies can actually do wonders if they get implemented in the proper phases of the supply chain process. I have tried out the potentialities of new technologies like AI, RPA, ioT and 5G through qualitative examination, where I have speculated that RPA has more capabilities in the future supply chain, thus I decided to research more about the same through my dissertation.

Motivation of studies:

While doing my other assignments, I read a lot about the retail industry and it was very clear that the development in the supply chain process is the backbone of their drastic developments, mainly in the food sector. I have visited Primark, Salisbury’s and Subway, and attempted to learn a lot about their supply chain from the employees who are directly
Working there. This gave me a solid interest to dig in detail to know more about the successful supply chain. New trends in the supply chain are being practiced by innovative technology solutions. Technical advancements are the real reason for the developments in the contemporary supply chain. RPA, 5G, Al are some examples of the same. When I studied in detail about RPA, I could understand that the future possibilities are really high. Even though few technology companies like Accenture and TCS have adopted the RPA innovation, it is seldom endorsed by Supply Chain companies. Tesco have made the baby steps in the RPA implementation but not many undertakes the same trend. Apart from this, I studied the gaps in the supply chain process, the energy wastage , huge labour cost, inefficiency and also the environmental hazardous practices which were being followed by traditional practices and how exactly the new advancements can be a solution for the same. I have realized the necessity of positive innovations which are beneficial both economically and ecologically.

Aims and Objectives:

My research is going to focus on the reason for changing the practices ,how it was before, outcome of the changes , and also will be concentrating on the possible areas of applications, economical values, the benefits, the gaps, limitations , challenges.
Research questions:
How the moves helped the developments, is there any gaps that have to be covered , what are the future possibilities ,how to implement the technically advanced practices in opposite to the traditional way of doing it , what are the limitations of the move , how the system is going to change if they adapt the innovations, benefits of new changes, challenges that may face during the real time implementation and a qualitative review of the future supply chain after the implementing the new technological tools.

Research methodology:

I am planning a survey approach for my research. My method includes getting opinions from different company employees, talking to different people related to retails , food industry , cloth industry , hotel industry and hospital industry to learn about their logistics and supply chain operations and research about the innovations that each of them follows and find the gaps if any. Also I am planning to refer to companies’ data which are relevant to my research.

Action Plan:
I have a good relationship with a few company’s top level employees (Subway, Shell petroleum, Sainsbury’s and Smiggle). I can interview them and get details. Other essential data can be collected from the records of the company (except confidential data). I am planning to conduct a small survey if I get permission from the site head. I am going to concentrate more on the Primary data than the secondary data for my research.

Case companies:

TCS, Accenture, Shell, Subway and Salisbury’s.

Data collection:

Data collection will be done by online articles, research papers, surveys, interviews and company databases.

Data Analysis:

After collecting the data in all the possible ways, I will be comparing the available data. I will be taking the companies who have already started applying these tools for their business and will try to figure out the phases of the supply chain network where the same technologies can be fit into. While I am researching in depth about the potentialities of new technologies in the Supply chain, I will be looking into the positive and negative effects of adopting new technologies over the traditional methods as well. The gaps in the current literature will be discussed, challenges will be studied and future possibilities will be analysed in depth.