Manifest Vegas: Q&A with Descartes' James Wee
The logistics world is still buzzing from the energy of Manifest Vegas, held at The Venetian. With industry leaders gathered to discuss the evolution of supply chain technology, it is clear the hunt for efficiency has never been more tech-driven.
Amid the sea of innovators at the event, one executive is tackling the complexities of the final stretch of delivery.
James Wee, General Manager at the Descartes Fleet Solutions Group, sat down to share how his two decades in technology – spanning from telecom to supply chain – are informing the next generation of fleet management.
Descartes is moving beyond disparate tools to create a holistic environment where real-time execution data directly dictates the strength of the original plan.
How is Descartes re-engineering the supply chain landscape right now?
Descartes is a comprehensive logistics solutions provider. We're a global company and we have a very broad portfolio.
The area that I oversee is called the fleet solutions group and what we do within the fleet solutions group is we provide technology solutions for last-mile fleet operators that have mission critical operations in delivering to last mile end points.
What do you believe the markers of a "winning" organisation are in the current market?
When thinking about what is going to be best-in-class over the near to medium-term time horizon, fleet operators that have what I consider to be "execution-aware" platforms to plan their day-to-day operations are markers of a winning organisation.
Having a continuous feedback loop of execution data influencing and factoring into the planning allows that planning to become better and better. By leveraging all this execution data, the constraints considered in the planning process are not missed. The entire system becomes fact-based and is refined through day-to-day operations.
How do integrated solutions solve the issue of decision latency?
I think what we'll see with winning organisations in fleet are going to be deploying integrated solutions that allow them to have you know more formalised and effective decision support.
Planning, dispatch, execution, visibility and analytics are all embedded into one holistic platform rather than in disparate systems. This allows real-time insights for improving operations to be readily available, rather than residing in different databases, which creates decision latency.
In a nutshell, this unlocks the speed to make good, fact-based decisions.
What do you think will define the future of supply chain strategy?
Lastly, organisations have built resiliency and agility to absorb change that happens because we live in a highly highly volatile environment. It's going to be the dynamic environments are going to be the constant rather than the exception.
