Talking Supply Chain: Resilience, Technology and the White House

When the supply chain moved into the mainstream due to the high number of disruptions and rising inflation that drove up prices, consumers demanded answers. The Biden administration responded by creating the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience.

But what is that? Melanie Nuce Hilton, senior vice president of community engagement at GS1 US, joined Talking Supply Chain host Brian Straight to discuss the council, its purpose, and what it may be able to achieve as it prepares a report on the state of the supply chain for later this year.

“I think anytime the private sector and the government engage in dialogue, it’s probably beneficial rather than solutions being considered in a vacuum,” Hilton said. “We work with the government a lot at GS 1 US [and we] always talk about the community as the trade. I’m always very interested in what members of the trade are seeing in their own practices … and it’ll be up to the people that get interviewed or participate in the efforts of the council to weigh in.”

Hilton went on to discuss the impact that regulation has on the industry, and also the role that creating standards for industry has, particularly as more companies adopt artificial intelligence and blockchain.

“What we were most excited about at GS 1 US is this was reinvigorating the conversations around supply chain visibility and now you look at some of these disruptive events and think even more [about technology’s use],” she added. “What I love about blockchain—whether you implement it in its pure form or whether you just take the concept of blockchain—it’s time-ordered transactions. So you ensure that as things occur, that’s how they’re being recorded and you have immutability so you can’t delete things which means there’s no funny business, in theory, going on because in blockchain, everything gets noted even if it’s a corrective action. You’ve recorded it.”

Here more of Hilton’s thoughts on technology, AI, and supply chain resilience in this episode of Talking Supply Chain.