Streamline Your Supply Chain with AWS: Deployment, Workload Optimization, and Cost Efficiency

TL; DR: A streamlined supply chain is a chain primed for success. Today we explore three facets of streamlining that can improve through the use of AWS tools and AWS-powered strategies. For easier and faster deployment, look into Elastic Beanstalk, CloudFormation, or CodeDeploy. For workload optimization, Auto Scaling, Lambda, and Amazon EC2 Spot Instances will be your best bet. And, finally, to tighten the grip on your spending, look into Trusted Advisor, Cost Explorer, or AWS Budgets.

Amazon Web Services is an enormous treasure trove of software solutions, where every industry can find something to make development a little easier. And, as supply chains and the logistics industry as a whole still struggle to mend what was disrupted by the pandemic, we could all use some digital helpers to further our progress.  

While AWS does not have a specific subset of supply chain-oriented solutions, they do have an ‘Industrial’ category. This encompasses a wide spectrum of solution areas that include Engineering & Design, Production & Asset Optimization, Smart Products & Services, Sustainability, and Supply Chain Management.  

Some of its other tools, meant for general use across different industries, are especially well-equipped to streamline supply chain operations. Today we will look at the best software solutions AWS has to offer when it comes to deployment, workload optimization, and cost efficiency. 

Manually deploying apps in the cloud must be a labor of love. It requires tedious, error-prone tasks like provisioning infrastructure, configuring environments, and managing dependencies. It’s time-consuming and can hinder scalability and agility.  

Unless your business has a unique infrastructure only a select few can maneuver, choosing AWS for cloud deployment will be the better choice for the following reasons: 

• Automation that frees you from the burden of developing and growing your software. 
• Reduced manual intervention that minimizes human errors.  
• Dynamic scaling capabilities; AWS adjusts resources based on demand. 
• Integration with other AWS services. 
• Simplified management via user-friendly interfaces. 
• Extensive documentation of every service this platform provides.  

In our recent HighTech article, Innovecs briefly looked at the various deployment strategies in AWS cloud, but choosing a strategy is just the first step. Now, let’s move on to choosing the specific services that will accelerate your app deployment.    

This platform as a Service (PaaS) simplifies the deployment and management of various applications. While it’s commonly associated with web apps, its flexibility also allows it to be used for supply chain management software solutions.  

This tool manages infrastructure, auto-scaling, and load balancing. And, it offers a managed environment for applications, enabling easy deployment without worrying about underlying infrastructure.  

Supply chain applications can seamlessly integrate with other AWS services like Amazon RDS and S3 for data management, while Elastic Beanstalk’s scalability adjusts resources based on demand, ensuring optimal performance and cost efficiency. Continuous deployment and integration support enable agile updates, crucial for adapting to dynamic supply chain needs.

This tool allows users to provision and manage AWS resources using declarative templates (structured pieces of code, where an engineer “declares” the desired outcome, with the program filling in the steps to take them there). These templates define the entire infrastructure needed for supply chain operations, including compute instances, storage, networking, and more.  

CloudFormation ensures consistency and reproducibility across environments, minimizing manual errors. It handles resource dependencies and auto-scaling configurations, allowing the infrastructure to adapt to varying demand levels, and users can track changes or even revert to previous configurations using the inbuilt rollback capabilities. 

CodeDeploy facilitates efficient deployment of supply chain and logistics applications with minimal downtime. Users define deployment configurations and upload their application code to AWS CodeDeploy. The service then manages the deployment process, ensuring updates are rolled out smoothly.

Customizable deployment strategies cater to specific logistics environments, optimizing deployment workflows. Rolling deployment is usually a good bet to ensure continuous availability and keep your supply chain management uninterrupted, but feel free to select something more specific to the needs of your company.

The need to mitigate your staff’s workload will never lose relevance, especially as we’re starting to see unprecedented negative effects of workers having too much on their plate.  

At the same time, the highly competitive supply chain market raises the bar with new risks in supply chain management. It is survival of the fittest and success of the most optimized; involved supply chain managers should prioritize finding the right strategies to keep their workload both reasonable and efficient.  

Amazon offers several options: 

• Monitoring and performance tuning on AWS enables optimization of supply chain and logistics workload by providing real-time insights into system performance and resource utilization.  
• Right-sizing instances on AWS optimizes supply chain and logistics workload by ensuring that resources match actual usage requirements.  
• Leveraging serverless architecture in AWS optimizes supply chain and logistics workload by eliminating the need for managing infrastructure, reducing operational overhead, and allowing applications to respond dynamically to changes in the supply chain ecosystem with event-driven processing. 

In addition to these strategies, several tools from AWS will provide supply chain companies with specific shortcuts to reach an optimized supply chain.  

AWS Auto Scaling optimizes supply chain workload by automatically adjusting compute resources based on demand. It dynamically adds or removes instances to match workload fluctuations, ensuring optimal performance, cost efficiency, and continuous availability.  

This scalability allows supply chain operations to handle varying workloads effectively, from seasonal peaks to unexpected demand spikes, without manual intervention. 

This tool offers serverless computing, which eliminates the need to provision or manage servers. It also charges users only for the compute time consumed during function execution. Lambda automatically scales to handle incoming requests, accommodating fluctuations in supply chain workload without manual intervention. Its event-driven architecture allows supply chain applications to respond dynamically to changes, and its management of server resources leaves employees more time to focus on improving the workflow in other areas that demand human attention. 

EC2 Spot Instances offer spare Amazon EC2 compute capacity at significantly lower prices compared to On-Demand Instances. This allows supply chain applications to access cost-effective compute resources, reducing operational expenses.  

Spot Instances are ideal for workloads with flexible start and end times, such as batch processing, data analysis, and simulations commonly found in supply chain operations. Organizations can use this tool to run more workloads at a lower cost, which leads us to the next mark of a healthy supply chain – cost efficiency.

The discussion on how to spend less on your business, while also making it more lucrative, is as old as time.  

Supply chain as an industry is not quite as old, but is subject to various fluctuations in world economy and riddled with sneaky hidden costs. Additionally, there is a strong inclination towards maximizing output while minimizing expenditure, especially in areas that could be easily optimized with more attention to detail.  

Some of the best practices on AWS to help with this would be: 

• Tagging resources. Increase control over your spending by applying tags to instances, storage, and databases. It will allow you to categorize and track costs based on various attributes and contribute to a more accurate cost allocation. With tagged resources, organizations can create targeted cost management strategies. Aside from that, tags generally facilitate cost reporting and analysis, providing insights into spending patterns and shining a light on more opportunities for optimization.  
• Utilizing Reserved Instances. RIs offer cost predictability and long-term savings, enabling organizations to commit to specific instance types for one to three years. Long-term commitment means better budgeting and improved cost efficiency. Additionally, RIs ensure that critical resources are always available, minimizing the risk of capacity constraints during peak demand periods.  
• Analyzing usage patterns and adjusting resources. By closely monitoring usage patterns, organizations can identify underutilized or overprovisioned resources and make adjustments accordingly. This proactive approach ensures that resources are sized to match actual demand, minimizing wasted capacity and unnecessary expenses. Additionally, organizations can leverage tools like AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Cost Explorer to gain insights into cost trends and performance metrics, facilitating informed decision-making and cost optimization strategies.  

This solution helps to optimize supply chain and logistics costs by providing real-time guidance and recommendations for improving cost efficiency. It analyzes AWS infrastructure to identify opportunities for cost optimization, such as underutilized resources, idle instances, or overprovisioned storage.

By following Trusted Advisor’s recommendations, organizations can eliminate unnecessary expenses and enhance overall efficiency in supply chain and logistics operations, ultimately reducing costs and maximizing ROI.

Visibility and insights into AWS spending are crucial for well-informed budgeting choices. Cost Explorer allows organizations to analyze their usage and spending patterns across various AWS services, helping identify cost-saving opportunities and inefficiencies. By visualizing historical data and forecasting future expenses, Cost Explorer helps organizations to identify underutilized resources.

With these insights, supply chain and logistics managers can reduce unnecessary spending and only pay for the things that contribute to the organization’s success.

After looking into your financial strategy’s weak spots and committing to better budgeting, you might be on the lookout for a useful tool to make this final process more intuitive.

AWS Budgets has got your back.

It assists in optimizing supply chain and logistics costs by providing customizable budgeting tools and alerts, which allows organizations to set budget thresholds based on their spending targets and receive notifications when costs approach or exceed these limits.

AWS Budgets helps prevent overspending and enables timely adjustments to resource usage. Organizations can track spending across various projects in a way that is transparent and accountable, but also easy to navigate.

With AWS, those who seek ways to improve their supply chains will likely find them, even if the platform does not necessarily focus on SC-specific solutions.

The modern landscape of international logistics is defined by resilience and adaptability, so making the most of Amazon’s digital toolbox is a key to success for those willing to do the legwork. Fast deployment, rational workload and sensible budgeting can only be a part of the journey; join Innovecs to learn even more ways to harness the AWS potential.