💡 Thriving supply chains in tumultuous times
📈 Identify risks: pinpointing potential disruptions through Blue Sky brainstorming and create contingency plans.
🧱 Build redundancy: establish multiple suppliers, cross-train employees, and maintain safety stock to reduce bottlenecks and criticality.
🔄 Cultivate relationships: foster connections with suppliers to gain insights, negotiate terms, and ensure transparency.
📊 Leverage data: collect and analyze data to identify trends, set system flags, and enhance decision-making based on real-time information.
🧠 Embrace resilience: shift the focus from survival to adaptability by fostering a culture of risk awareness, redundancies, and continuous improvement.
Summary: A lean supply chain has long been the ultimate goal and gold standard. “Trim the fat”, “reduce cost”, and “reduce waste” have been common sayings. The past few years have highlighted that lean supply chains perform best with predictability. Minimal lead time variability on raw components and finished goods has allowed companies to hold less safety stock; moreover, sourcing departments rarely have updated supplier contact information because it is easier to send a PO to a generic email. Prior years data could be used to set forecasts for the next year, and use of data analytics provided improved forecasts. This came to an abrupt halt in early 2020 when the pandemic arrived. What was supposed to be a 14-day shutdown turned into months. This was followed by the Suez Canal, the Russia-Ukraine war, and a return of pirates in the Red Sea. All of these black swan events happened within a few years. The increased instability due to the global black swan events had many companies asking “when will it go back to normal?” The answer is that we have and continue to be in unprecedented times; instability and unpredictability have become the new normal. This constant unpredictability has placed immense pressure on supply chains. Unfortunately, lean supply chains are both unreliable and lack resiliency; there is no longer any cushion or room for error. Therefore, companies must adjust how their supply chain’s function. This begs the question, what can be done to increase supply chain resiliency and reliability? Attend this educational session to learn how to add and increase resiliency in each supply chain component as well as for the entire supply chain.
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