On October 13, 2017, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Guiding Opinions on Actively Promoting Supply Chain Innovation and Application" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), which for the first time elevated supply chain innovation and application to a national strategy. This is not only an opportunity for the logistics industry, which has always emphasized cost reduction and efficiency improvement, to achieve leapfrog development, but also an opportunity for the agriculture, manufacturing, and service industries to fully form an industrial ecological chain and gain global competitive advantages.

The United States was the earliest country to elevate supply chain development into a national strategy. As early as 2012, the United States released the Global Supply Chain National Security Strategy, which aims to promote efficient and safe transportation of goods and cultivate a resilient global supply chain.

The release of the Global Supply Chain National Security Strategy marks the beginning of modern logistics entering the era of supply chain management in the competitive market environment of global economic integration. British scholar Martin Christopher believes that "the competition in the 21st century is not between enterprises, but between supply chains", and various countries have regarded the competition of supply chain platforms as the main support for national competition.

In 1985, American management scientist Michael Porter proposed the concept of "value chain" based on "economic chain" in his representative work "Competitive Advantage", emphasizing that each link related to a company's strategy is a whole of value activities, which is the most direct source of supply chain. In 1996, Reiter first proposed the definition of supply chain, which is a network of operational entities, based on the integration of the aforementioned "value chain" concept. In 1998, the American Logistics Association defined logistics as a part of supply chain activities and began to transfer the concept of logistics to the supply chain.

In China, the research on supply chain is not lagging behind other countries, but the overall supply chain competitiveness presented by various industries is relatively weak. Currently, only Lenovo Group is selected as one of Gartner's top 25 global supply chain companies.

Since the establishment of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tsinghua University in 2001, the course "Supply Chain Management" has been offered by the author to undergraduate students. Today, this course has been popularized in most relevant majors in domestic universities. Higher education and specialized training related to supply chain have laid a theoretical foundation and talent reserve for the application and development of supply chain in China.

Thanks to the rapid development of global economic integration, computer and automation, information technology, and artificial intelligence, supply chain management has begun to rise and gradually deeply integrate with virtual/physical networks such as the Internet, mobile Internet of Things, and Internet of Things that rely on information technology. It promotes the integration of traditional business flow, information flow, capital flow, logistics, personnel flow, manufacturing flow, and service flow, integrating modern sales network, information network, capital network The transformation of multiple functional network platforms such as logistics networks, personnel networks, manufacturing networks, and service networks has led to the formation of a fully process efficient collaborative supply chain network structure tailored to customer needs.

Supported by the Internet and the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence have transformed traditional supply chains into highly intelligent, visualized, and service-oriented smart supply chains. Not only can design, procurement, production, warehousing, sorting and distribution, packaging, sales, transportation, delivery to customers, and after-sales service be efficiently and high-quality coordinated in all aspects of the enterprise's internal and external supply chains, but also in production Forming a deep supply chain integration and industrial ecological chain in different industries such as sales and logistics, thereby improving the ability to "solve difficulties" for end customers.

At present, China is not only the world's second largest economy, second largest consumer country, and second largest manufacturing country, but also the country with the second largest number of Fortune 500 enterprises. It is also the world's largest logistics market and e-commerce market. However, it is in a revenue and competition depression in the global supply chain market.

At this point, China's transformation of supply chain innovation and application into a national strategy can be described as weighing the situation: it can not only leverage China's economic advantages and market gravity to restructure the global supply chain layout, but also leverage global supply chain advantages to drive domestic key industry related enterprises, achieving resource integration, process optimization, and collaborative development; It is not only conducive to promoting the transformation and upgrading of key industries, supply side structural reform, and the integration and development of upstream and downstream industries, but also conducive to reducing resource waste, reducing collaborative costs, and promoting the development of physical enterprises through effective integration of various links from production to consumption.

The biggest opportunity and policy dividend released by the Opinion is to basically form a smart supply chain system covering key industries in China within three years, cultivating around 100 global supply chain leading enterprises; The construction of industrial ecological chains in agriculture, manufacturing, circulation, and supply chain finance will receive comprehensive policy support, with green supply chains and global supply chains being the main goals of supply chain innovation and development.

The agricultural supply chain will start with the organizational system, scientific level, and quality and safety traceability ability of agricultural product production, processing, circulation, and service, with the goal of promoting the integration of "primary, secondary, and tertiary industries", and developing modern agriculture that integrates planting, breeding, processing, production, supply and sales, and domestic and foreign trade.

By utilizing visualization, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence technologies, the manufacturing supply chain will achieve collaboration, service, and intelligence throughout its entire lifecycle, including product design, procurement, production, warehousing, packaging, transportation and distribution, sales, and after-sales service.

The goal of the logistics supply chain is to build a collaborative platform for procurement, distribution, warehousing, distribution, and comprehensive service supply chain, guide the optimal allocation of production resources at the production end, and cultivate new supply chain service enterprises.

With the goal of "moving away from emptiness to reality" and serving the real economy, the supply chain finance industry can deeply penetrate into the agricultural supply chain, manufacturing supply chain, and circulation supply chain links, achieving precise credit evaluation and effective funding supply. This can not only facilitate the integration of capital and industry, but also effectively prevent supply chain finance risks.

The green supply chain transforms the environmental pressure of traditional industries into the driving force for modern industrial innovation and development. In terms of green manufacturing, green circulation, and reverse logistics systems, it advocates for new consumption, establishes new standards, applies new equipment, cultivates new drivers, creates new systems, and supports new industries to ensure sustainable economic growth in the future.

The global supply chain is an extension of the "the Belt and Road" initiative, and it is also an inevitable choice for China to actively integrate into the global supply chain network under the global economic integration - on the one hand, actively integrate into the global supply chain network, on the other hand, participate in the formulation of global supply chain rules, which will help improve the competitiveness of the industry wide supply chain in the global market and build a world-class supply chain ecosystem.

While facing opportunities, it is inevitable to also face new challenges. However, it can be predicted that various resource platforms that support the cultivation of around 100 global supply chain leading enterprises will definitely receive priority attention and achieve success.

Author: Liu Dacheng, Vice President of the Internet Industry Research Institute and Director of the Logistics Industry Research Center at Tsinghua University, Doctoral Supervisor of the Department of Industrial Engineering, Executive Vice Chairman of the Railway Journal, Executive Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Expert Committee of the Dangerous Goods Professional Committee of the China Transportation Association, and Chairman of the Digital Agriculture Committee of the China Association of Agricultural Products Circulation Brokers, Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Smart Supply Chain Special Committee of the Beijing Alliance for Integrated Services of Two Modernizations, and Chief Expert of the Logistics Weekly of Xinhua Economic Reference News Agency.