Improve Safety and Security Across Your Supply Chain

You’re only as good as your supply chain.

The current strain on supply chains globally has reinforced just how connected and vulnerable supply chain processes are to variation and shortages. That’s just one of the reasons end-users are taking a new look at their supply chains to review safety, security and sustainability practices while creating more nimble, agile, and responsive partnerships.

Safety and Security

Supply chain attacks aren’t new. Threats and bad actors continue to find new ways to breach networks, and they’re finding new opportunities through the supply chain. These attacks are damaging to operations and reputations and costly to businesses and their suppliers. Attackers looking for the easiest pathway to get into the network will often exploit vulnerabilities in the supply chain that ultimately offer access into the original target’s network.

Sustainability

Supply chain sustainability includes two primary elements: availability and environmental stewardship.

Often a supplier’s product is part of a larger solution; in some cases, a Molex antenna is one of more than 200 components in a finished product. One delay in any part of the process can cause massive disruption throughout the supply chain and impede a producer’s ability to meet distribution deadlines.

That’s why companies are doing more due diligence to know their suppliers upstream and downstream while taking inventory of each partnership and identifying weak links.

The other part of sustainability is the ability of a supplier to meet new and changing environmental stewardship expectations, regulations, and compliance standards globally.

For example, there is new interest in tracing sustainability deep into a supply chain to ensure there is no artisan mining and that there are no conflict materials or significant carbon emissions linked to a component. Companies care about circular flow and recyclability and want verification that the components they are using comply with and support the manufacturer’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals.

Know Your Suppliers

Manufacturers seek a level of responsiveness measured in minutes, hours, and days, not weeks, months, or quarters, making up-to-date insight crucial for efficient operations.

This new level of responsiveness means supply chain partners must meet changing requirements for improved transparency, tighter lead times, more flexibility, and greater agility.

Molex has reexamined supply chain strategies while leveraging data to improve customer experiences. As a result, Molex offers a sophisticated assessment of its supply chain custody and vendors to increase transparency and confidence. The company’s scale, structure, and relationships ensure that the specific components that make up the whole will meet safety and security goals for the end-user.

Current and Future Needs

Technology to help automate and ensure supply chain security is continually being developed. Capabilities include:

• Temperature monitoring to ensure the safety of food and medicines
• Predictive Maintenance (or PdM), which involves artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to assist suppliers and logistics companies in detecting failure patterns to predict and avoid future failures
• Machine learning (or ML) can analyze data to identify potential holdups and bottlenecks and make suggestions to speed up the supply chain
• Condition-based Monitoring (or CbM) to remedy possible failures before they lead to delays
• Functional Safety (or FuSa) assessments to enable system designers to take measures to minimize threats
• Use of blockchain to enable faster and more cost-efficient delivery of products, enhance products’ traceability, improve coordination between partners, and aid access to financing

Many, if not most, of the new technologies revolutionizing supply chain management rely on antennas that enable wireless communication. The right product will work in remote areas and handle a combination of Bluetooth/Wi-Fi, ultra-wideband (UWB), cellular IoT, LoRa, RFID, and NFC protocols.

Molex Wifi Antenna (Image source: Molex)

Molex Ultra Wideband Antenna (Image source: Molex)

Sensors and other monitoring device designs have a broad range of requirements and possible space constraints, but the Molex portfolio of wire-to-board connectivity provides the breadth necessary to find the ideal connectivity solution.

Molex Mini-Fit Connector Family (Image source: Molex)

Selection Made Easy

These Molex solutions and more are readily available through DigiKey and are illustrated in the DigiKey Supply Chain Transformed video series.