Global value chains are becoming increasingly complex due to rising geopolitical risk, trade growth, and volatility of material availability. Losses due to poor transportation conditions have become a multibillion-dollar problem due to extreme difficulty in identifying the cause of damage or when an incident occurred. These challenges offer a great opportunity to overhaul the overall value chain with a solution that can provide real-time information on transport operations 鈥� from changes in temperature and humidity to whether the goods have been tilted 鈥� to all parties involved, giving everyone the ability to quickly adapt to potential incidents and rapidly recover from them.

The Connected Product solution responds to this need by monitoring the location and environmental conditions of goods in transit. It is especially useful for tracking fragile goods, such as solar panels; bulk liquids, such as wine and olive oil; and sensitive cold chain shipments, such as cheese, pharmaceuticals, and even vaccines. The tracking provides greater visibility across the entire supply chain, and agility to activate immediate reactionary procedures, in case of damage or delays. This reduces friction when purchasing insurance and processing claims for shipments, and ensures timely delivery of goods. It also reduces waste and promotes sustainability.

Connected Product brings together the power of * and the global track and trace option, extended with NTT DATA smart insurance policy management assets**, to dramatically change the way people ship goods and manage associated risks. The solution also includes components built using .*** By enabling end-to-end, real-time monitoring of the transportation conditions, the solution can monitor all variables that could affect a shipment, and automatically trigger and execute insurance policies if goods are not transported under certain pre-defined conditions. Utilising 麻豆原创 Business Network for Logistics helps improve accountability for each stakeholder and makes transport insurance management easier. Plus, by digitising shipment and insurance documentation, the solution simplifies tracking and insurance processes across the supply chain, reducing waste and costs, and benefiting the whole ecosystem 鈥� from the insurance company to the insurance reseller to the logistics companies.

鈥淕lobal disruptions have caused today鈥檚 value chains to be more complex and diversified than ever before, and this complexity will only increase. What we鈥檙e announcing today improves supply chain visibility for logistics companies and insurers here in the APJ region, and delivers on NTT and 麻豆原创鈥檚 shared vision of helping companies around the globe achieve greater resiliency and agility to ensure they are prepared for future disruptions,鈥� said Paul Marriott, President, 麻豆原创 APJ.

鈥淎t the 麻豆原创 Sapphire conference in Tokyo today, modernising supply chain management is one of the key themes that we鈥檒l be discussing. I鈥檓 excited to see the innovations 麻豆原创 is driving together with NTT around this area, and what more we can offer to help our customers,鈥� said Hirofumi Suzuki, President and Representative Director, 麻豆原创 Japan.

鈥淭oday, more than ever before, global logistics need to be resilient and adaptative. Long-term planning alone is no longer sufficient, and organisations must be able to react quickly especially in times of uncertainty. Critical to enabling this type of agility is to have the right data in the right hands, in real time,鈥� said Norbert Rotter, SVP, NTT DATA Corporation, and CEO, NTT DATA Business Solutions.

Currently, NTT DATA and 麻豆原创 Connected Product teams in Japan, Germany and Spain are collaborating on a pilot with a Spanish logistics group and a German insurance company, using Connected Product to track the condition of hundreds of containers moved by 20 shippers between Europe and Asia. The data gathered by IoT sensors helps to ensure that conditions critical for the goods 鈥� like temperature, luminosity, or shock-proofing requirements 鈥� are managed during the journey. That information gives customers the opportunity to quickly react to incidents. The pilot project will continue to run through September 2022, after which NTT DATA plans to incorporate the system into business operations, extending the solution to more international insurance and logistics companies.

For more information on Connected Product, please watch featuring Christian Klein, CEO and Member of the Executive Board at 麻豆原创 SE, and Jun Sawada, CEO of NTT (at the time of filming).

About NTT DATA

NTT DATA, part of the NTT Group, is a global innovative company providing business and IT services with its headquarters in Tokyo. The company helps its customers in their transformation processes via consultancy, industrial solutions, commercial process services, digital and IT modernisation and managed services. NTT DATA enables them鈥攁nd society as a whole鈥攖o move confidently towards the digital future. The company proves its commitment to the long-term success of its customers, combining a global scope with local service to work with them in over 50 countries around the world. To learn more, please visit .

About 麻豆原创

麻豆原创鈥檚 strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 麻豆原创 customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers鈥� businesses into intelligent enterprises. 麻豆原创 helps give people and organisations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want 鈥� without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 麻豆原创 helps the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. For more information, visit .

For more information, press only:

NTT DATA Corporation Public Relations Department,
pr-support@kits.nttdata.co.jp, JST

Celest Lim, 麻豆原创 (APJ media),
celest.lim@sap.com, SGT | 麻豆原创 麻豆原创 Room (APJ)

Mayuko Ogata, 麻豆原创 (Japan media),
mayuko.ogata@sap.com, JST | 麻豆原创 麻豆原创 Room (Japan)

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of 麻豆原创鈥檚 2021 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
漏 2022 麻豆原创 SE. All rights reserved.
麻豆原创 and other 麻豆原创 products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 麻豆原创 SE in Germany and other countries. Please see听听for additional trademark information and notices.
*麻豆原创 Business Network for Logistics 鈥� global track and trace option, enables real-time insights into the availability of materials and products to reduce supply chain risks and optimise costs. It helps companies monitor critical business processes by comparing planned versus actual milestones.
**NTT DATA smart insurance policy management assets assist insurance companies in making decisions regarding payment of insurance claims and in calculating insurance claims.
***麻豆原创 Business Technology Platform (麻豆原创 BTP) brings together data and analytics, artificial intelligence, application development, automation, and integration in one, unified environment to enable innovations that natively integrate with 麻豆原创 applications.

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Consider the听听by scientists of Sir Ernest Shackleton鈥檚听Endurance, which sank off the Antarctic coast in 1915. Fortunately for the explorer and his crew of 27, all managed to survive. As for the shipwreck, scientists found it remarkably intact amid the frigid depths of Earth鈥檚 southernmost seas. But the photographs capture one significant change with the passage of time: the sunken vessel, like the craggy ocean floor surrounding it, now teems with life. At a depth exceeding 3,000 meters, triple the distance sunlight can听听underwater, how do ecosystems manage to thrive? And what can businesses, sometimes facing inhospitable conditions of their own above sea level, learn from the enterprising plants and animals whose habitat eludes visibility?

To run at their best, businesses carry out multiple operational processes simultaneously, maximizing efficiency and minimizing risk across them all. So too the complex networks of flora and fauna undersea. A lack of visibility presents challenges not only for aquatic ecosystems but for commercial ones as well, in the latter instance imperiling critical functions such as procurement and supply chain, logistics, and the maintenance of equipment connected by the Internet of Things (IoT). Business leaders increasingly look to the cloud for digital solutions to enhance visibility across all these functions. But they鈥檙e equally wise to gaze seaward as well for insights on instilling resilience. Disruption, after all, can leave wreckage at the bottom of an income statement just as it can at the bottom of an ocean.

At a time when听viral variants, recurrent lockdowns, and geopolitical tensions continue to roil supply chains and labor markets, businesses require 360-degree visibility across the interconnected operations of trading partners and solution providers to maintain continuity, foster collaboration, and keep promises made to customers. Yet many procurement and supply chain professionals possess only fragmentary information about isolated business processes, unable to gain a comprehensive view across the four walls of their organization, let alone those of their buyers and suppliers. Integrated digital platforms, however, lend businesses the expansive view and data-driven insights they need to anticipate rapid shifts in supply and demand and suggest available alternatives for the sourcing of raw materials and indirect goods.

Yet while cloud-based business networks are a contemporary innovation to extend visibility where it runs scarce, they are hardly without precedent. Deep-sea creatures have evolved their own ingenious techniques for sharpening their acuity to procure food. Consider the Pacific barreleye, whose translucent head enables the fish to听听in total darkness while stalking its next meal. Or the stout blacksmelt, whose oversized eyes听听from its otherwise modest frame. Or the scallop, whose 200 eyes peer behind mirror-like lenses, focusing in unison to听听the tiniest trace of light undiscernible to animals further down the food chain.

Back above the surface, businesses lie vulnerable to disruption even when supply chain visibility remains intact. When finished goods pile up in logjammed seaports, for example, manufacturers can offer little solace to customers denied on-time shipments. To ensure prompt delivery via sea, road, rail, or air, businesses require unimpeded visibility across all facets of logistics. They rely on cloud-based networks to track shipments in real time, collaborate with transportation partners, and secure alternatives when unforeseen contingencies thwart the best laid plans.

Here too, lessons emerge from the deep. Spanning distances exceeding anything comparable on land, the ocean organizes logistics through vast networks known collectively as the听. Life-sustaining elements, such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus, flow from the surface to the ocean floor and back again through intricate cycles of photosynthesis, decomposition, consumption, and sedimentation. The biological pump is also responsible for sending to the bottom of the sea much of the Earth鈥檚 excess carbon dioxide, which, if released, would oversaturate its atmosphere and overheat its surface. Through the resilient, never-ending exchange of resources essential to life both within and beyond its depths, the ocean maintains arguably the most elaborate logistical network ever devised.

Cloud-based business platforms operate on a planet-wide scale with unrivaled efficiency, too. Not only do they facilitate procurement, supply chains, and logistics between businesses and their trading partners, but in recent years they have begun to connect remote assets through the Internet of Things. This cloud-based capability, often called asset intelligence, has revolutionized the maintenance of equipment.

Suppose a utility operates a windmill farm offshore. All of the units require physical upkeep but accessing them can prove costly and dangerous. It can also prove futile if the windmill happens to be in perfect working order. But by linking together far-flung equipment virtually, businesses听听digital twins 鈥� in lieu of natural eyesight 鈥� to inspect these assets from afar. Such cloud-based asset intelligence networks aid the operations not only of energy companies, but of rural health clinics, security firms, and even soft drink purveyors. Think of all the distributed vending machines requiring replenishment.

But how, devoid of light, do the creepiest, crawliest critters inhabiting the deep sea manage to ascertain their surroundings? How do they gather reliable, actionable intelligence on 鈥渁sset鈥� and threat, friend and foe, near and far? Consider the tripod fish, which elegantly听听atop narrow, leg-like fins, poised to sense distant vibrations from potential prey. The beaked whale, meanwhile,听听echolocation, not unlike bats and submarines. By emitting short, high-frequency clicking sounds and waiting for them to bounce back, these mammals develop an acute awareness of their surroundings, often to the peril of less sensitive beasts who become breakfast. The vampire squid, meanwhile,听听bioluminescent fluid to lure hungry, if unsuspecting, targets. For their part, sharks and stingrays听听electric currents to map their surroundings and navigate using the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field.

As the听Endurance听shipwreck-turned-aquarium makes vivid, the abyss of the icy sea imposes formidable obstacles to survival in an environment prone to volatility and unforgiving to the unadaptable. Yet nature has innovated surprisingly durable solutions for illuminating the fundamental biological processes that nourish sprawling ecosystems undersea. The cloud does much the same for networks of businesses engaged in commerce amid drier, if similarly disruptive, conditions. In fact, the cloud and the ocean are beginning to converge on an increasingly sustainable future for all the Earth鈥檚 inhabitants. The visibility made possible by cloud-based networks holds the potential to听significantly reduce听the volume of plastics cluttering the sea and encumbering the creatures great and small who call it home. As digital technologies give rise to sustainable solutions, resilient ecosystems thrive even in the darkest corners on Earth.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president, Product Engineering, and head of Customer Solution Support & Innovation at 麻豆原创.
Top image: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust/National Geographic.
This article was originally published on the global 麻豆原创 News Center.

The post What Businesses Can Learn from Ecosystems That Thrive in the Darkest Corners on Earth appeared first on 麻豆原创 Southeast Asia News Center.

This was revealed at a recent event organized by titled 鈥楢 Growing ASEAN, A Hungry Population: Building Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply Chains鈥�, which brought together business leaders across the region鈥檚 food ecosystem spanning agriculture, manufacturing, distribution, logistics 鈥� including , a worldwide leader and innovator in the production and marketing of high-quality packaged fruit and healthy snacks, and , a leading manufacturer and supplier of products and services in the field of agriculture with a sustainable value chain from research, production and sales of seed products, plant protection drugs, bio-organic products, rice and coffee.

Around a third of all food produced[1] 鈥� or 1.3 billion tons 鈥� is lost or wasted every year according to previous estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), also contributing 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions[2].

Experts and industry players cited the opportunities that lay ahead for Southeast Asia, among the world鈥檚 most productive agriculture regions, particularly on investing in driving high-tech agribusinesses, enhancing cross-industry collaborations, digitalizing, and building resiliency across food supply chains and other activities along the value chain to bolster the region鈥檚 food future.

Transforming Southeast Asia鈥檚 Food Production

Agriculture and food are key drivers for Southeast Asia鈥檚 economy and GDP, forming a substantial proportion of the region鈥檚 workforce.

Empowering food producers with the right tools to meet the growing demand for food and combating food wastage are critical for challenges in the region 鈥� areas where technology and digitalization play a critical role, according to Verena Siow, President & Managing Director, 麻豆原创 Southeast Asia.

鈥淎s a start, we need to better utilize the food we produce to minimize wastage. Food security and sustainability is more of a resource management challenge, where technology can be a change agent.鈥�

鈥淕iven the diverse food industries across the region which spans from production to retail and restaurants, businesses need help in gaining better end-to-end oversight over their operations, forecast demand through big data to deliver food in a timely manner, and improve supply chain efficiency 鈥� all of which could greatly contribute to the reduction of food scarcity in a sustainable way鈥�, added Siow.

Speaking at the fireside chat hosted by Siow, Leonardo Rabelo, Chief Financial Officer of Dole Asia Holdings, outlined the company鈥檚 efforts to elevate agriculture practices, ensuring better harvests for farmers yet also driving sustainable practices to mitigate food waste across its large operational footprint.

鈥淢inimalism is at the heart of our green habits in our journey towards zero food loss. Technology in Agriculture or Agtech is vital in shaping our progressive and proactive waste reduction agenda.听 The in-farm IoTs, phase tracking and听 end-to end digitalization will be the new super powers to enable us to improve our quality and overall product value like never before听 and听 remarkably reducing waste. For the remaining waste our direction is to focus on upcycling it. To cite few examples we make banana puree, frozen banana, etc.听 In Dole, the 鈥淎rt of possible鈥� and the magic of enthusiasm are our fruit-some way of achieving zero fruit waste,鈥� said Rabelo.

Digitalization Giving a Hand to Food Growers

As food demand continues to increase with population growth and a rising middle class, countries will need to look at ways to bolster domestic food security and boost local production, especially for import and export dependent nations in the region.

Fundamentally, greater technology and finance support is needed for farmers and food producers, to increase yields and have better real-time data of the health conditions of their crops, especially for regions vulnerable to climate change like the Mekong Delta 鈥� which accounts for nearly half of Vietnam鈥檚 rice production.

Nguyen Duy Thuan, Chief Executive Officer of Vietnam鈥檚 Loc Troi Group, was also part of the fireside chat along with Siow and Rabelo. He shared about the company鈥檚 pilot of the world鈥檚 first rice sustainability standard with rice farmers across the Mekong Delta, to develop a sustainable, high-quality value chain, and eventually market Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP)-certified rice both domestically and abroad.

鈥淭oday Loc Troi works with more than 200,000 rice farmers and aims at 1 million farmers in 2024, on top of an annual rice milling capacity of 6 million tonnes. We leverage our foundations in agricultural knowledge in developing new crop varieties and resource-saving farming methods, along with applying technologies like drones and hospital mobile apps to provide consultancies for rice and fruit farmers. We were a member of SATForRice, a program by the Netherland government, which used AI in spectrum analysis and soil interactions to forecast next year鈥檚 yield, pests, and diseases risks. Loc Troi is working with farmers to obtain crop planting area codes and traceability through QR codes to promote Vietnam鈥檚 agricultural products in international markets鈥�, said Nguyen.

Loc Troi recently underwent a digital transformation journey with in 2020, which helped the group of companies standardize all processes to follow international best practices, improve planning capacity, and automatically track all activities across its business, and also maximize agriculture competitiveness and integrability.

Transparency, Visibility a Weak Link in Food Value Chain Resiliency

With greater internationalization of Southeast Asia鈥檚 food businesses, enabling a resilient and agile food value chain remains critical to drive future growth for the industry. This includes greater integration and collaboration across partners, along with digital supply chains that grant visibility across their partners鈥� operations and their own.

To accelerate the circular economy, 麻豆原创 has also announced the availability of , a solution for designing products sustainably to help businesses increase their measurement and data management capabilities. The new solution, now available across Southeast Asia, helps companies gain better visibility of material flows through their processes including tracking and complying with rapidly changing regulations, especially those concerning product packaging and plastics.

[1]

[2]

For more information, press only:
Darryn Lim, darryn.lim@sap.com
Omnicom PR Group for 麻豆原创, sng.sap.wg@omnicomprgroup.com
麻豆原创 麻豆原创 Room; press@sap.com

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