Sustainable Supply Network

I believe ‘supply chain’ is no longer an appropriate description because the combination of market demands and disruptions have fundamentally changed the supply requirements and now demands networked capabilities to meet the normal course of business. The pandemic has highlighted this new reality in a dramatic way through the waves of disruption that have been crashing on the supply chain. These disruptions have been systematically breaking the links in the supply chain and as a result demonstrated the importance of a ‘Supply Network’ in order to sustain the supply. It is too easy to call out the initial disruption of the pandemic as a black swan, a once in a lifetime, event and we would be foolish to think this will be resolved into a ‘new normal’. The new normal will more likely than not be made up of waves of disruption that demand a new sustainable supply network to provide the framework and foundation required to support the market going forward.

The disruptions we experience regularly and with increasing frequency have highlighted the need for a resilient and sustainable supply network that can flex and connect based on the current availability and capability in real time. This has quickly become a base requirement that a significant challenge to the technology and the culture of organizations and especially the marketplace. The disruption and the resulting changed demands on the supply network require agility and resilience to respond along with the tools and methods to swiftly sense the disruption and then just as swiftly determine the appropriate reaction, or series of potential reactions, to the disruption so the network can swiftly and efficiently execute the most appropriate reaction(s). There is no longer an option to perform deep analysis and study the disruption, the market now demands immediate reaction in order to implement a repair to the network from the disruption.

This is where it gets difficult, how does your network first sense the issue and then quickly and efficiently react? The simple answer is that without a real time networked solution that incorporates artificial intelligence tools to sense the issue and then machine learning to analyze the options there is really no way for a human to react is the necessary timeframe. The key to success in this global market is a resilient and sustainable supply network that can work collaboratively across nodes and partner to react and repair the issues. The challenge is overcoming the limitations of the legacy batch processes and practices.

This is something that requires a concerted and coordinated action plan across the global supply network in order to support the market demands. The answer is definitely not bringing manufacturing back to the local market because the global supply cannot support the demand effectively or efficiently. Unfortunately, there are really no ‘easy’ answers to the challenge and on top of this, the response requires a continuous analysis is real time in order to sense and respond in a manner that addresses the issue or the disruption. Disruption in the global market is never the same reason and always requires a combination of multiple responses from multiple supply partners. This is difficult and requires a network response in real time to support the market.

Our goal should not and cannot be to build a new normal, our goal instead must be building a resilient and sustainable network of partners that collaborates to support the changing demands. This is a difficult goal that will not get easier with time. Our current supply chain tools are not architected to support a network and this must be the first step in the journey. This will be a complicated challenge that requires a significant level of collaboration to achieve. Delay will only make the transition more difficult though.