The world of the supply chain continuum

The aim of the Silicon Economy is to completely virtualize the entire value creation and its networked logistical process chains: the entire world in virtual. Does that ring a bell?

It sounds a lot like the metaverse! More precisely: like the industrial metaverse. We have to clarify the term here though: The industrial metaverse is a) now used in an inflationary way and b) is not clearly defined, especially in social media. At the science location Dortmund, we prefer to speak of a digital continuum to avoid this vagueness. What is this? 

A continuum basically describes, in an easily understandable way that is above all free from any vagueness, something that continues uninterrupted. Some people are familiar with the time-space continuum, for example. The continuous and uninterrupted form of this is the basis for the existence of life in the universe. If we consider a continuum as a closed circle that symbolizes an uninterrupted sequence of developments, we soon realize: Something similar is happening right now in the Silicon Economy, in the context of the platform economy, in which process chains are increasingly developing into closed cycles in an automated and autonomized manner; from planning and scheduling to service billing and payment. 

All of this is connected, increasingly with the support of artificial intelligence. This results in self-learning, mutually reinforcing and accelerating processes in a perpetual cycle. This is what we mean when we speak of a digital continuum. Such a continuum requires an extensive to complete virtualization of all processes, their continuous transparency, a nearly real-time networking as well as data sovereignty. In other words, everything that we have been studying and transferring into practice for years under the slogan of the Silicon Economy. We can therefore draw a short and clear conclusion from the description of this term: The Silicon Economy is the open ecosystem of the digital continuum. This continuum has different facets, which brings us to the supply chain continuum.

The digital continuum rests on three pillars: The first one, the technology continuum, integrates all current and future developments in high technology. The second one consists of the social networked continuum, which connects people and technology with each other. Despite the rapid development of technology, this will not be able to work without people in the foreseeable future. The third pillar in the digital continuum we understand to be the supply chain continuum, which extends beyond company boundaries into the global value creation networks.

Here in Dortmund, we keep these three continua in sight as a clear vision for the coming years. With the emphasis on “coming years,” because the status quo is different: The metaverse, although often discussed, is still far from existing, and also, most people have seldom heard of continua in practice. So how can we reach the brave new world of the supply chain continuum now, in these times of crisis and war, at the beginning of a recession and in the midst of a climate crisis?

We are clearly being led on the path from the status quo to a better future by a number of transformation processes in the economy as well as in society. Some have already started. The digital transformation, for example, has been going on for a while. The resilience transformation is currently being intensively discussed in the face of crises and wars. We are also living in the middle of a sustainability transformation. These change processes are being accompanied by a clearly necessary transformation towards more adaptive people and companies. This allows us to adapt to the many transformation requirements better, faster and above all with less friction. So much for the framework – how do we fill it? How exactly do we reach the supply chain continuum via transformation? 

We can only do this by familiarizing ourselves with the new technologies, trying them out and letting them support us during the transformation even better than before. These new technologies achieve their fullest effect especially when they are developed in an open-source manner. In this way, they become quasi standards in their applications through the widest possible dissemination. Thanks to these standards, we then also know at which points in the supply chain which technologies can be used in our value creation networks for everyone’s benefit, which is of utmost importance for creating transparency. 

There is a saying about a sack of rice in China. However, if I actually learned in real time that it had just fallen down, thanks to new technologies in a completely networked digital continuum – our supply, our networks and our logistics would have a security, resilience and adaptivity that had never existed before in human history. Transparency is the basis for every transformation. The greatest obstacle to this transparency, however, is often not technology: This already exists to a large extent and is developing superbly, especially in Dortmund. The greatest obstacle in my opinion is often the attitude of people and companies. The decisive factor for our future is the mindset, the openness of decision-makers on all corporate levels to actually using these technologies. We need this to actually be able to reach the brave new world of the supply chain continuum in the future.