What are the key trends that are going to affect companies in the consumer goods to retail value chain from now through 2020?

Well, we have a list of 12 of them, thanks to the consultants at Capgemini, who released their third bi-annual report on the future of the consumer goods to retail industry earlier this year. Each report looks out about 10 years, so this one is through 2020, and was developed from a number of sources, including workshops with leading manufacturers and retailers across the globe, with some 200 total participants.

The subject is on our mind because of a videocast our Supply Chain Television Channel hosted this week featuring Bob Fassett of Capgemini, joined by Dawn Andre of RedPrairie, who summarized key aspects of the 2020 report.

The full videocast can be watched here: 2020 Future Value Chain Videocast

The report itself can be downloaded here:  2020 Future Value Chain Report

Source: Capgemini, 2020 Future Value Chain Report

The trends cover a wide range of issues, a few with relatively little connection to the supply chain, but it was surprising in a sense to see how many in fact did have a connection to SCM.

Some were clear and direct, such as #11 related to rapid adoption of new supply chain technologies.

So also for #7, on Sustainability, which leads Capgemini to predict that this trend will lead to much greater use of collaborative logistics practices to make greater use of full truckload carriage and reduce congestion in cities by combining shipments across vendors in a single delivery truck.

Capgemini says it is actively working on substantial pilot on this concept in Europe.

There are many less direct SCM connections as well. Capgemini, for example, notes the Health and Well-Being megatrend is likely to drive consumers to want to be able to scan a bar code say on produce in a store and see data about where it was grown and maybe something about how long it took to get to the shelf and other information the supply chain must provide.

While not many of these may be a surprise, we think it's a handy list to have on hand in pondering future supply chain strategies.

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