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Australian Supply Chains Plagued by Data Accessibility Problems, Appian Study Reveals

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3 weeks ago

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66% of Supply Chain Professionals Work with Incomplete or Inaccessible Data

SYDNEY, Aug. 28, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — New research from Appian (Nasdaq: APPN) reveals that Australian supply chains are crippled by data accessibility issues, with 66% of surveyed supply chain employees stating that they find themselves working with incomplete, or inaccessible data in their roles.

The study, which surveyed 300 supply chain workers across the shipping, distribution, and transportation sectors, highlights persistent data-related obstacles despite ongoing digital advancements in the industry. The lack of unified data significantly affects inbound visibility, creating challenges in predicting what, when, and how much inventory will arrive at distribution centres or factories.

The research found that for approximately 41% of supply chain professionals, the ability to maintain operational efficiency is compromised by poor data accessibility. Similarly, 31% of the workforce expressed difficulties completing essential inventory management tasks. This uncertainty around the availability of parts and materials hinders future operational capabilities, impacting production planning and decisions on adjusting output levels.

“Australian supply chains have a data problem. They rely on digital processes and accurate data to function yet are asking their workers to operate with incomplete or inadequate information to manage complex, often disconnected operations across critical areas such as logistics management, shipment tracking, and schedule coordination,” said Luke Thomas, Area Vice President Asia Pacific and Japan at Appian.

“Fragmented, inconsistent or unavailable data creates a lack of real-time visibility that impacts key functions within the supply chain such as inbound visibility, which can have knock-on effects on efficient staffing and warehouse operations.”

The Risk of Inaccessible Data

While major digital transformation projects are widespread in the supply chain sector — 78% of respondents noted their organisations had adopted new digital initiatives within the last five years—data usability has not kept pace.

Today, 43% of workers identify data accessibility as their primary data challenge, 36% of respondents say that data security and protecting sensitive private data is their biggest concern and a significant portion indicated that data overload, where abundant data is available but there is no effective way to analyse and use it, is their largest problem.

“When information is inaccessible or unable to be analysed accurately, it complicates decision-making processes and heightens the risk of operational errors or ongoing inefficiencies across supply chain operations,” Gordon Maddock, Regional Vice President, Broad Markets at Appian, explained. “Unclear data governance can also inadvertently provide access points for unauthorised users, posing a threat to both operational integrity and confidential information.”

To address these challenges, Appian advocates for the strategic implementation of a modern process automation platform enhanced by a data fabric.

“A data fabric is an architectural layer and toolkit that seamlessly integrates data across disparate systems, whether its on-premises or in the cloud,” Maddock said, “By creating a centralised, unified view, it substantially enhances both security and operational efficiency. This integration is crucial for supply chain operations, allowing for precise control over who can view, update, and delete data, and ensuring that every piece of information is accurately accounted for and securely managed, whilst enabling action to be taken on the data.”

Data Challenges Impact Customer and Employee Experiences

Appian research also highlighted the impact of poor data accessibility on the overall customer and employee experience. It found that approximately 39% of workers encountered obstacles in meeting customer service expectations directly due to complications arising from inadequate data access.

Compounding the issue, 33% of those surveyed reported that such data-related challenges adversely affect the employee experience. This dissatisfaction is particularly problematic for Australian supply chain organisations facing skilled worker shortages, where maintaining a satisfied and efficient workforce is crucial to prevent increased turnover, knowledge loss and to ensure workforce stability.

Lacking unified and visible data needed to forecast productivity fluctuations render proactive staffing decisions impossible. This leads to inefficient labour management, with employers struggling to optimise both casual and full-time labour. Consequently, this impacts the overall experience of both staff and the service output for their customers.

AI: Low Adoption, High Potential

Despite the growing adoption of digital transformation strategies, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in supply chain operations remains low, with only 3.67% of workers regularly using AI-powered systems. This slow uptake highlights key opportunities for enhancing supply chain efficiency and responsiveness through advanced technologies.

“Embracing AI and more sophisticated data management tools can revolutionise the way we approach supply chain operations. Connecting and streamlining access to data can transform challenges into opportunities, fostering a more responsive and resilient supply chain ecosystem,” concluded Thomas.

Download the full Appian Asia Pacific Data Trends Whitepaper to learn how industries like supply chain can build resilience by improving data access and automating process orchestration to improve visibility, agility, and profitability.

About Appian

Appian is a software company that automates business processes. The Appian AI Process Platform includes everything you need to design, automate, and optimise even the most complex processes, from start to finish. The world’s most innovative organisations trust Appian to improve their workflows, unify data, and optimise operations—resulting in better growth and superior customer experiences. For more information, visit appian.com [Nasdaq: APPN]

Follow Appian on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter).

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SOURCE Appian

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Huawei Launches Over 20 All-New Xinghe Intelligent Network Offerings to Amplify Industrial Intelligence

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1 hour ago

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September 21, 2024

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SHANGHAI, Sept. 21, 2024 /CNW/ — During HUAWEI CONNECT 2024, Leon Wang, President of Huawei’s Data Communication Product Line, announced more than 20 all-new Xinghe Intelligent Network offerings globally at the summit themed “Xinghe Intelligent Network, Amplify Industrial Intelligence”. These purpose-built offerings contribute to an AI network ecosystem and help customers seize opportunities for intelligent development and maximize intelligent productivity.

With the development of AI technologies, the world is advancing from digital transformation to intelligent transformation. All industries are quickly adopting AI technologies to create new use cases, for example, self-driving cars, intelligent diagnosis and treatment, and intelligent train inspection. All of these are significantly improving the efficiency and experience of our work and daily lives.

The advent of the intelligent era is driving networks into intelligent ones. Huawei has been making joint efforts with partners to lead research and practices of intelligent networks. That’s why Huawei constantly upgrades its Xinghe Intelligent Network offerings to help customers grasp opportunities for intelligent development, build new intelligent network infrastructure, and maximize intelligent productivity in the intelligent era. Key highlights include the following:

Xinghe Intelligent Campus focuses on AI-enabled, experience-centric campus network construction, ensuring zero freezing for audio and video applications, zero degradation on services, and zero waiting for interactions.Xinghe Intelligent WAN introduces a wide range of intelligent technologies to intelligently schedule millions of flows and precisely optimize service experience.Xinghe Intelligent Fabric adopts the AI Turbo engine to improve network throughput, enhancing foundation model training efficiency.Xinghe Intelligent Network Security integrates AI technologies into network security detection, accurately and rapidly identifying threats.

To support network solutions in various scenarios, Huawei released more than 20 featured offerings globally. Examples include the industry’s first 100 Tbps fixed-form Ethernet data center switch, the industry’s first 51.2 Tbps liquid-cooled fixed-form data center switch, the industry’s first AI router, high-quality 10 Gbps campus switches and Wi-Fi 7 APs, Intelligent SASE Branch Security Solution, and the industry’s first IP Autonomous Driving Network Solution. All these offerings are designed to help customers with greater business returns.

As the intelligent era calls for intelligent networks, Huawei will continue to drive the development of intelligent networks and upgrade its Xinghe Intelligent Network products and solutions, ultimately helping global customers to stride towards the intelligent era and reap more benefits.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/huawei-launches-over-20-all-new-xinghe-intelligent-network-offerings-to-amplify-industrial-intelligence-302254757.html

SOURCE Huawei

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HUAWEI CONNECT 2024 | Huawei Unveils the Brand-New Xinghe Intelligent Fabric Solution, Powering the AI Era

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2 hours ago

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September 21, 2024

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SHANGHAI, Sept. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — At HUAWEI CONNECT 2024, over 300 industry leaders, experts, and scholars gathered for the data center network session themed “Xinghe Intelligent Fabric, Powering the AI Era.” The event featured discussions on the evolution and technological advancements of data center networks. During the session, Arthur Wang, President of Data Center Network Domain at Huawei’s Data Communication Product Line, introduced the newly upgraded Xinghe Intelligent Fabric solution. This cutting-edge solution aims to establish a data center network characterized by one map for intelligent operations and maintenance (O&M), one network for diverse computing, and one platform for simplified deployment, providing a robust network infrastructure to support enterprises’ digital and intelligent transformations.

In his keynote speech, Arthur Wang outlined the emerging trends in data center network development. He emphasized that in the AI era, data center networks require both a “brilliant brain” and “resilient bones.” The newly launched Xinghe Intelligent Fabric solution is designed to deliver a powerful network infrastructure tailored for the AI era, featuring:

One Map for Intelligent O&M: Zero Management Concerns

Huawei’s exclusive network digital map enables rapid cross-data center and cross-vendor fault identification within minutes. Additionally, the NetMaster network large model facilitates AI-driven O&M, eliminating manual intervention and ensuring zero management concerns.

One Network for Diverse Computing: Zero Service Interruptions

The Xinghe Intelligent Fabric supports various application scenarios, including intelligent computing, general-purpose computing, and storage. The innovative Network Scale Load Balancing (NSLB) algorithm increases network throughput to 95% and boosts AI training efficiency by over 10%. With the exclusive iReliable three-level fast switchover capability, it achieves sub-millisecond switchover, guaranteeing zero service interruptions.

One Platform for Simplified Deployment: Zero Configuration Errors

By employing digital twins to simulate networks in advance and verify configurations post-deployment, the solution ensures 100% accuracy in network changes. By harnessing network-security convergence capabilities, AI creates an intelligent security matrix to analyze millions of security policies, achieving zero configuration errors.

Looking ahead, Huawei will continue to collaborate with industry partners to enhance research and innovation in data center networks, promote intelligent upgrades, and create greater value for the industry.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/huawei-connect-2024–huawei-unveils-the-brand-new-xinghe-intelligent-fabric-solution-powering-the-ai-era-302254753.html

SOURCE Huawei

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Cultivating a Culture of Peace: International Day of Peace Statement by Education Cannot Wait Executive Director Yasmine Sherif

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5 hours ago

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September 21, 2024

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NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2024 /CNW/ — The longing for peace transcends time, geography and religion. Based on justice, human rights and universal values outlined in the UN Charter, a culture of peace brings us all together in our common agenda for humanity. We can only co-exist by aligning ourselves with such a world order.

On today’s International Day of Peace, we call on world leaders to end conflict and embrace a culture of peace as enshrined in the UN Charter and related international law.

As the UN General Assembly outlined in the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace  a quarter of a century ago, this must include: “Respect for life, human rights and fundamental freedoms; the promotion of non-violence through education, dialogue and cooperation; commitment to peaceful settlement of conflicts; and adherence to freedom, justice, democracy, tolerance, solidarity, cooperation, pluralism, cultural diversity, dialogue and understanding at all levels of society and among nations.”

Educating for peace starts at home and continues in school through years of education. This takes place during the most formative years of a child learning about their identity, ethics, values, conscience, courage and compassion. Wherever there has been a failure in imparting on children the imperative for peace, the world is turned upside down. This is a global failure with no geographical boundaries.

Today, we live in a world of unprecedented violence, armed conflict and chaos. All the genuine and heartfelt commitments made in 1945 in the UN Charter seem to be fading away. Children and adolescents are the most vulnerable, the least protected, and the most impacted. They bear the brunt. 

Global conflicts killed three times as many children in 2023 than in the previous year, according to the United Nations. The number of forcibly displaced people reached an unprecedented 120 million in May 2024.

“In 2023, the United Nations verified a record 32,990 grave violations against 22,557 children in 26 conflict zones, a 35% increase from the previous year,” according to recent analysis by the UN.

We can end these violations and invest in a constructive co-existence globally. We can use our resources for education, rather than for wars. In classrooms around the world, girls and boys who have withstood the wrath of war can rebuild their hopes and their lives. Cultivating a culture of peace is possible. The financial resources exist. The choice as to how we use them is ours.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cultivating-a-culture-of-peace-international-day-of-peace-statement-by-education-cannot-wait-executive-director-yasmine-sherif-302254413.html

SOURCE Education Cannot Wait

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