Supporting Smart Home Devices
Integrated Supply Chain Platform Accelerates Speed-to-Market
The global smart homes market is projected to grow in value $65.95 Billion (USD) from 2020 to 2024. The battle for market share is being hotly contested as innovative start up companies and established tech giants make their smart home play.
Challenge
Bringing a smart home device to market and delivering a great customer experience comes with a range of supply chain challenges and complexities.
The smart device supply chain is complicated by the requirement smart home device manufacturers have for device flashing. By leveraging RRDs' value added services such as retail- ready configuration, smart home device companies can postpone software or firmware upload beyond the manufacturing stage, up until right before a product ships to an end user.
Demand fluctuation and seasonality in a relatively new market can be difficult to forecast. Smart home device manufacturers must manage increasing levels of product complexity alongside the pressure to meet retailers’ and customers’ demands and have a robust returns management process in place.
To meet these challenges, smart home device companies are looking to their supply chain networks and focusing on solutions that can:
- Increase the speed of new product introductions
- Improve product quality and presentation
- Increase responsiveness to fluctuating demands
- Better manage inventory and working capital
- Distribute through multiple channels
- Make more cost-effective use of resources
- Manage complexity and product variations
- Cater for mid-cycle product offering modifications/improvements
- Support an effective and scalable returns management process.
Comprehensive Solutions
RRD can provide supply chain services for smart speakers, video entertainment products, connected lighting, smart thermostats, and home monitoring/security products.
RRD’s global, vertically integrated supply chain platform provides packaging and postponement solutions for smart home devices from concept design to final delivery. Our product packaging and logistics strategies can help to lower your costs, accelerate speed-to-market, simplify management of product manufacturing and packaging, and improve responsiveness through a proven global platform.
RRD understands the complexities of today’s smart home device supply chains and offers a full complement of services:
- Creative packaging design integrated with our global print and packaging production facilities in Europe, North America and Asia
- Materials management, sourcing and procurement
- Managing original design manufacturers (ODM’s) and suppliers across multiple geographies
- Globally integrated supply chain systems for execution and collaboration
- Product assembly, test and configuration, labeling and serialization
- Smart device flashing and configuration
- Order management and multi-channel fulfillment
- Inbound and outbound logistics management
- High level of security
- Reverse logistics and returns management.