Why Ireland is Becoming a Hub for Supply Chain Investment

In the current climate, businesses are experiencing ongoing challenges such as supply chain disruptions, rising operational costs and growing sustainability pressures. 

According to Dr Chantelle McCann Kiernan, Departmental Manager for Innovation and R&D at IDA Ireland, the key to addressing these challenges is to invest in supply chain improvements, particularly with advancing technologies.

A recent survey carried out by Blue Yonder indicates that we are seeing a growing number of companies prioritising investments. Almost 80% of C-Suite and senior executives reported that their companies have increased supply chain investments in the last year, while more than half (51%) are investing at least US$10 million in supply chain improvements.

Chantelle argues that innovation is an important priority for many businesses in Ireland, with growing investments in key areas of innovation, such as sustainability, digitalisation and supply chain. However, in the current macro-economic landscape, companies also need resilient and future-proof hubs when it comes to their business development. 

Investment in digital transformation 

Supply chain investments are setting Ireland apart from competing countries in the EU due to the government supporting digital innovation through investments to enable a more digitised and interoperable manufacturing supply chain. 

Chantelle explains: “With the government’s support, we were able to leverage a temporary EU grant post-pandemic to enable digital transformation at scale for a large portion of our client base in high value manufacturing sectors. The grant also provided support for establishing the digital foundations that would enable better supply chain connectivity and operational visibility.

“It’s clear to see that the Irish government has a strong idea on what digital transformation looks like for manufacturing and how this translates into other business units and outside of the factory in the global network and supply chain.”

She adds: "Digitalisation can be extended to the supply chain to enable full data visibility, in order to create a fully interoperable global trade ecosystem and enhance supply chain resilience."

Industry collaboration

Supply chain investments can lead to collaborations with providers, as seen with organisations such as Scale Ireland, which as collaborated with academia to inform the talent pipeline for Ireland’s tech sector, in particular startup and scaling companies. 

Chantelle continues: "It's rare for global competitors to collaborate on defining common challenges and solutions relating to the digitalisation of processes and other business units. However, this is evident in Ireland — most notably through the efforts of Digital Manufacturing Ireland (DMI), an industry-led national organisation responsible for transforming Ireland’s manufacturing value chain through innovative technology, and the Industry 5.0 Lighthouse Network (I5.0LN), which delivers transformative improvements to the operations of its member organisations through the deployment of digital technologies."

As with all evolving ecosystems, Ireland has seen collaborations involving several large multinationals, with global competitors seeking to understand these organisations’ digitalisation journeys. 

Chantelle reflects: "In one situation, we leveraged the expertise of Siemens Advanta, a company that provides end-to-end digital solutions for various industries, to help I5.0LN members define the detailed digital transformation roadmaps for its sites. We used this as a blueprint when supporting clients through the temporary EU grant post-pandemic as previously mentioned.

“We were then able to use these findings to create a report, which was shared more widely to help other companies define their transformation journey and roadmap, facilitated through DMI.”

Future talent skills profiles 

The recent growth in innovation and investment has led to industry roles evolving, in order to meet the capabilities of operating within new environments.  

In Ireland, these investments are helping in terms of the talent pool, especially within the pharmaceutical and life sciences spaces.  According to an IDA Ireland whitepaper on the factory of the future, around 90,000 more people will be needed in MedTech as companies strive to meet the Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 approaches, with the skills profile looking to be very different in five years' time than it looks now.  

Working with providers and academia to inform the talent pipeline is also important. Companies in Ireland are especially proactive in defining the future skills needs through various national expert working groups who work on future skills needs, such as Future Skills Ireland.

IDA Ireland also carries out assessments with companies on future skills needs and supports with sitewide skills transformation through training grants. The intel from these assessments is then used to inform the national skills provision for the future.

There has also been an exponential increase in the use of AI in jobs and its impact needs to be assessed on the domestic employment base and the roles that are likely to be impacted.  

“AI will likely divide the skillset by job tasks, not by job roles," Chantelle predicts. "When looking at tasks, we need to gauge if these tasks can be augmented and/or displaced by AI and automation. Also, because of the increased use of AI by all sectors in the future, we are likely to see some technological revolution which may result in displacement and redundancy in certain tasks and will likely create completely new or technology augmented roles.

“As more companies accelerate their adoption of AI, we will gain a better understanding of its impact on roles and tasks. This information can then be used to define and support workforce upskilling, aligned to the needs of the companies.” 

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