The CES of Las Vegas took place at the beginning of January and once again, this show proved to be an unmissable show for the technologies of tomorrow. This has once again established itself as the global meeting place for Tech. It is also becoming a show of great importance at the automotive level in the United States as demonstrated by the 2023 edition. More than ever, this 2023 edition had a Supply Chain focus, through the innovations on show and the challenges facing the industry.

Supply Chain issues within many related industries…

At the preview press conference, Steve Koenig, Vice-President of Research at CTA, spoke of the challenges facing businesses worldwide.

• Supply chains remain vulnerable. However, China's dismantling of its zero COVID policy is a positive sign for supply chains.
• Demand for semiconductors is slowing, allowing stocks to rise and slowing delivery times.
• There is a labor shortage, which is widespread, including a shortage of 10 million workers in the United States alone. This is particularly true in the logistics and transport sector. According to the American Trucking Association, there is expected to be a shortage of 160,000 truck drivers in the United States by 2030, further pushing the use of autonomous vehicles.
• We face stubborn inflation and rising interest rates – The US Fed has raised interest rates six times in 2022. Businesses face challenges amid rising interest rates.

…To the specific challenges faced by manufacturers in the sector

Furthermore, the Supply Chains of innovative companies are themselves affected and investments are sometimes reduced. While the smart home is at the heart of innovations, we learned in November that Amazon planned to lay off 10,000 employees, mainly in its Alexa division, due to its unprofitability. These model restructurings may have impacts on product availability and their costs.

It is not surprising to see that these tech giants are the forerunners in terms of the digitalization of operations. Therefore, businesses are expected to move beyond digital transformation into a new phase of automation and virtualization, with industrial IoT applications growing in number across the economy, including factories or even fully automated and intelligent farms and hospitals.

A prominent place for innovation in matters related to the Supply Chain at the 2023 CES

Beyond the Supply Chain challenges of companies, innovation also had its place in connection with the Supply Chain. Thus many innovations had obvious links with the Supply Chain and underpinned the objectives of resilience and sustainability very present in different industries. Creating sustainable and collaborative supply chains that improve resilience is indeed at the heart of the issues.

To improve the Supply Chain, one of the challenges is to improve visibility along the chain and thus avoid blockage as much as possible. In order to streamline processes and keep an eye on its entire supply chain, Daimler Truck North America has highlighted their use of the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform to improve visibility, reduce downtime and increase efficiency. With the new MO360 data platform, Mercedes-Benz is connecting its approximately 30 car factories worldwide to the Microsoft cloud, improving the transparency and predictability of its digital production and supply chain.

Still in terms of innovation, new technologies and navigation tools have been suggested. These are crucial, especially as most fleets will be switching to electric vehicles. In terms of transportation, technologies likely to facilitate autonomous driving had an important place. Developers such as Waabi, Waymo, Aurora, Gatik, Plus and Kodiak Robotics showed off their automated driving systems.

This strong presence in commercial and industrial vehicles reflects a major trend in this area. For example, truck manufacturer Paccar Inc. exhibited three vehicles at the show: a battery-electric Peterbilt Model 579EV, a fuel cell Kenworth T680 and a Peterbilt autonomous demonstration truck equipped with Aurora autonomous driving technology.

Big names at the 2023 CES also showcased technologies to build supply chain resilience. Microsoft also shared lessons learned from its own global supply chain and partner ecosystem. The collaboration is therefore also gaining momentum.

Other issues linked to sustainability made it possible to highlight the challenges of supply, in particular the choice of partners and materials and effective strategic sourcing.

The Walloon Region (Belgium) in force during this edition

For this 2023 edition which represented the real return to normal for the post-Covid CES, the Walloon Region (Belgium) and the AWEX (Walloon Export and Foreign Investment Agency) were indeed once again there with two distinct pavilions, one for 9 hand-picked start-ups located in Eureka Park, the most visited and publicized hall of the CES, strictly reserved for start-ups, and another for SMEs (7), in the international pavilions area.

Being a very innovative region, dedicated in particular to the digital sector but also a major industrial and logistics region, the Walloon Region pays very close attention to the Supply Chain challenges of different industries. Providing a permanent approach to strengthen value chains for these strong sectors and companies, the Region also had a major interest in its participation in being able to follow trends and anticipate the challenges of tomorrow.

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