We have entered an area where visibility, flexibility, and being able to intelligently make decisions based upon trusted data and real-time data are necessary. When you think about the global supply chain, you have physical goods being transported and, in parallel, you have data coming with the goods.
Often there are disruptions, such as weather. There are workers trying to understand and get information to make decisions, which adds to the complexity of the supply chain. Manufacturing needs information to respond to these disruptions in real time. The challenge is that the flow of the physical goods in transit must be connected to the data associated with those goods.