COVID-19 Disruption Removes Decades of Supply Chain Inertia – Now What?

The Coronavirus Reveals How Connected Global Supply Chains Really Are

While the forcing function is a terrible situation given its potential impact on human life, it is driving companies to fully understand all the connections and dependent variables across their supply networks.

Prior to the current supply chain disruption by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) there was embedded inertia across most industries where folks were willing to live with a little extra inventory, capacity, expediting, etc. rather than having to understand the nature of their supply network and the inherent risks at all tiers and echelons.

Today there is a concerted effort across all fronts to understand the network in terms of inventory buffers, supply origin, alternate supply, transportation options, lead times, collaboration, and production prioritization, along with the ability to reflect these realities into the S&OP and S&OE processes.

Architecting Supply Chains for Resilience

While it was a reaction to a terrible crisis that is driving many companies to truly understand their supply networks, this understanding needs to be codified moving forward so that supply disruption is dampened as best we can today while also meeting consumer needs across all industries with safe and reliable products.

Resilience needs to be permanently architected into the supply network topology so that collaborative networks can react as a team when disruptions occur, especially those that impact human life.

Everyone wants to make a positive contribution across the network understanding that the network overall is only effective if it delivers the right product to the right person at the right time.

Given that different folks have different roles to play in the network, it is imperative that they are able to onboard quickly onto the network with the correct role, workflow, and permissions based on their trade interaction with other members of the network.

In this way, they help ensure a collaborative network effect that can harness all the potential benefits from the inertia which has been recently removed and optimize all assets for the benefit and safety of the end consumer.

Digitization of the Supply Chain Provides New Tools

Luckily today we have a depth of technology that can be leveraged to enable this codification or in other words digitization of the supply network.

Now that we have removed the inertia and can reset the table, let’s take advantage of quantum computing, network architectures, artificial intelligence, telematics, and the internet of things to really effect some change so that we are more resilient when the next disruption occurs.

Related Video: AI for Supply Chain Practitioners (above/right)

Scenario planning is a key strength of these new technologies. Once a continuous and incremental real-time planning and execution workflow is configured across the network, companies will be resilient in their product availability along with being able to use those same workflows in a sandbox environment to investigate future disruptive scenarios and their ability to react quickly to any issues.

There are no safe ports in this particular storm. While certain industries like consumer products and electronics may be projected to recover quickly, the fact that the global logistics industry is being hit with enormous disruptive impacts will affect all sectors, especially when you consider these disruptions are growing and expanding on a daily basis.

We at One Network reacted quickly to the virus outbreak by analyzing all potential disruption on a global basis, incorporating those variables into our AI and Machine Learning algorithms, and enabling our customers to quickly identify and resolve both current and potential problems across their supply networks.

These include networks that deliver over 30% of the food in the US, networks that contain hundreds of hospitals and the related supply logistics for vaccines and medicines, networks that provide essential products to our armed services on a global basis, and networks that deliver and support the parts infrastructure to keep our cars, trucks, and emergency vehicles rolling across the country.

About the Author

Joe Bellini is Chief Operating Officer at One Network where he provides leadership across the various departments which focus on delivering network-based value across multiple industry segments and geographies. Joe brings his business solution and technology expertise gained through his work experiences at some of today’s leading technology companies, including General Electric, HP/EDS, Brooks Automation, IRI, R1/Accretive Health and Oracle. Joe holds a patent in Supply Chain Planning and is the co-author of the business strategy book, “The Real-Time Enterprise.” Joe holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Applied Mathematics and Statistics is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and is certified in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from MIT Sloan.

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