Gartner, Inc. announced Microsoft won its Supply Chain Breakthrough Award, the top award in its Power of the Profession Supply Chain Awards.
The awards showcase supply chain initiatives that enhance communities and the environment while benefiting businesses, stakeholders, and customers.
“This year, Gartner’s Power of the Profession Awards showcased innovation on a global scale with an increasing emphasis on social impact,” said Eric O’Daffer, research vice president with Gartner’s Supply Chain practice. “The majority of finalists and winners were notable for approaching challenges with a global lens, and the entries we received that focused on social impact more than doubled from last year.”
Microsoft’s “Real Time Visibility Enabling a Sentient Supply Chain” won for Breakthrough of the Year and as Process or Technology Innovation of the Year, Gartner said. Microsoft’s Devices Supply Chain team was able to pivot when supply and demand waned in 2022 after the pandemic from a supply-constrained environment to a fully order-driven model, the company said. As a result, Microsoft was able to develop a sentient supply chain that was “all-sensing and monitoring,” predictive, and able to optimize itself in real-time consistently.
As a result, the company saved $550 million in inventory risk avoidance through an Azure-driven platform capturing more than 50 million supply chain data points per day and a suite of self-serve analytics that converted real-time signals into actionable intelligence, the company said.
Other award winners included Vodacom Group, which won the Social Impact of the Year award for its “A healthcare cold-chain beyond COVID-19.” The company leveraged its internal supply chain expertise to coordinate and track the successful delivery of Covid-19 cold storage and distribution solutions in Africa. The solution delivered nearly 3,000 cold-chain units, supplying more than 500 vaccination sites across South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, DRC, and Ghana.
Zuellig Pharma won the Customer of Patient Breakthrough of the Year for its ‘”eZTracker: Making Safe HealthCare More Accessible from Plant to Patient with Blockchain.” The solution was the first production-grade, end-to-end supply chain traceability solution powered by blockchain and tracked more than 2.9 million products when it went live in five markets.
Procter & Gamble won the People Breakthrough of the Year for its submission “Equality and Inclusion: Goa Plant ‘Saksham.’” The nomination focused on Goa, India, where the conservative legislation would not allow women to work in manufacturing industries beyond day shift work. Working with female shop-floor trainees, P&G worked to help them achieve professional goals, recognizing them as “saksham” or capable, competent” and helping them to become role models. The effort resulted in a comprehensive program that coordinated closely with external government agencies to enable a fully female shop-floor production crew – the first of its kind in P&G’s feminine care business in Asia Middle East & Africa Region.