Lecture: "The 4PL in the 21st century. Fact or Fiction? The technological and business challenge"
With this title M.SOFT Worldwide, gave a series of conferences in Colombia in the framework of Logismaster 2017, and in the cities of Cali, Bogota and Medellin, last September. Vicente Mompeó, Managing Partner of the company, explained in detail what we summarize below.
In an increasingly dynamic world, both in the systematic emergence of new technologies and processes to be integrated into organizations and society, and in the changing needs of consumption habits and unlimited increase in market demands, the different actors in the supply chain that compete daily for differentiation, the global control of the physical flow of goods and optimization of the use of resources involved in it, remains a paradigm towards which companies converge in a slower than really desired.
In view of this need, we must prepare for the adoption in this 21st century of the figure of a key player, not yet consolidated but destined to play a major role in the course of history, the 4PL (Fourth Party Logistics), about which, as if it were a myth, much literature has been written and disseminated in many academic initiatives; and with less intensity, due to many barriers of various kinds of which we will speak, there has also been an attempt to promote it from the business world, so far with rather moderate success.
A concept, the 4PL, which has been in existence for just over two decades, and which will soon become one of the great challenges and, at the same time, an increasingly real opportunity, on which to build a model of integrated control of the supply chain, from a holistic and collaborative perspective.
Let's see how to prepare for this reality, from business and technology, and how to be the first to take advantage of it, to guarantee the continuity of our business and achieve maximum competitive differentiation in the market, achieving the highest levels of operational efficiency.