Supply Chain Reshaped By COVID-19 Disruption

There is no question that the Coronavirus has disrupted the world and in the face of all this disruption, the supply chain is being reshaped in reaction to the waves of disruption started by this pandemic. It is safe to say that the world social and economic order has been turned upside down during this time in reaction to the speed and the range of disruption driven by this virus. There has been no area left untouched at this point and the focus is on reaction and adjustments in reaction to the disruption. This requires more than ever extreme flexibility and robust collaboration and communication to sense and respond to the disruption.

I firmly believe that one of the key strengths developed over the years on the extended supply chain is the ability to sense and respond to disruption in a manner that efficiently identifies disrupting factors and resolves through a robust process of continuous improvement. The baseline tools, practices and procedures are in place to respond to the disruption and these have really been the foundation framework that has helped the supply chain to respond and continue to support the market.

The question now is - What process and procedures should be incorporated to allow the extended supply chain to support the multi-faceted waves of disruption that will continue?


These are some key factors that will support the velocity and impact of disruption:

First and foremost is robust, open and holistic collaboration practices. This is key to the ‘sense’ process in sense and response to the disruptions. This requires open sharing of information collected from all quarters in order to better understand relationships and impact of the disruption. Without the collaborative practices the response portion of sense and respond runs a great risk of reaction to the wrong cause of the disruption.

Data collection and analysis provides the information and identifies the relationships that are driving the disruption. There is really nothing new to the level of importance of data in the ability to first sense the disruption and then determine the cause and identify a reaction to the disruption.

Define and implement actions and change based on the data analysis in response to the disruption. One key to the implementation of change is the realization and acceptance that there is no silver bullet that will address the disruption. The disruption is fluid and the changes and reaction must be fluid as well!

The reaction in the system to the change must be reviewed and validated to confirm the response to the change provided a positive impact. This is starting the process over again.

Finally, the most important factor now is speed of reaction! This means multithreading reactions and actions with the analysis of the data. There are two key tool in this time to analyze reactions; the use of Artificial Intelligence and robust collaborative practices.

The guiding factor in this time of disruption must be ‘Don’t Panic and Respond to Data’! This will be the most difficult and greatest time of disruption and when you add the cultural and health disruption to this business disruption the impact can initially seem overwhelming. In order to overcome this feeling we must identify a program that includes a process of actions to address the disruption. We should be using the experience gained over the recent years driven by business and consumer disruption in order to meet the demands of the current disruption.

Robotic Process Automation And You

Robotic process automation is a capability segment that is growing quickly in large part because of the speed in which it can be delivered with limited risk. This is a natural progression to the growing autonomous automation capabilities including robotics. This next logical step of business process improvements combines business process analysis and improvements with software robots identified and driven by artificial intelligence tools and workers. Combine the potential benefits with the limited risk and the robotic process automation provides a very alluring opportunity to quickly add benefits and efficiencies to processes in the operation.



The challenge in the operation is continuous pressure on improvements in efficiencies; to do more work with less human interaction. Unfortunately for the operation, and logistics in the supply chain, robotic implementation can be very disruptive because of the dramatic change to the operation. This is where robotic process automation can bring value to automate the existing process without dramatic disruption. This will provide the opportunity to improve efficiencies while the disruptive projects can be implemented. In fact, I would suggest that robotic process automation be viewed as the first step in a robotic strategy because it provides the first step to proving the automation.



Within the operation the greatest disruption is brought about by the dramatic and sudden change that is demonstrated by physical robotic implementation in the warehouse operations. Robotics not only disrupt the operation and the process and flow of people and operations, it also disrupts the physical layout of the warehouse resulting from the robotics implementation. While there have been dramatic increases in efficiencies, volume and accuracy this must be tempered, initially at least, with the disruption in the warehouse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a strong advocate of automation to improve the operation, I am only saying you must go into this with eyes wide open to understand and plan for the holistic impact to the operations.



Robotic process automation allows for a trial at increased automation to improve the efficiencies of the operation without dramatic change. This is a benefit not only to the operation, it is also a benefits strategic planning by providing a point of validation for the automation. This is a critical benefit because of the investment required for increased automation with autonomous robotics. The resulting increased efficiencies delivered by robotic process automation allow for a refocus by the operation to more complicated processes that may be more difficult to automate or require autonomous robotic automation.



Automation is a multi-faceted opportunity for improvement and must be viewed as such in strategic planning and strategic initiatives. The organization and operation especially must evaluate options based on the process and automation opportunity, all processes will not achieve improvement from the same automation tool. This is why it is so important to implement a robust and forward thinking strategic planning process to help identify the improvements.



Automation is another flavor of process evaluation and improvement that brings a new set of tools to the toolbox. It must be remembered that these tools excel in different scenarios and situations and the strategic planning process must be a focus to incorporate these new tools as appropriate. This incorporation of new tools is critical to the long term success of an organization and especially now considering the velocity of disruption. There is no time to wait and see how others use the tools. The key to success is embracing a strategic process that experiments and looks toward incremental change to stay ahead of disruption. Disruption is the tipping point of incremental change, unfortunately it is tool late to react to disruption and best case scenario is creating your own disruption.

Generation AI Influence On The Market

Artificial Intelligence has greatly impacted the supply chain and ‘you ain’t seen nothin yet’ as they say. The market disruption is driven by the combination of consumer embrace of technology and the growing embrace from technology savvy, older generations in the market and the workforce. These converging influences are driving the supply chain now to incorporate these same new technologies in combination with artificial intelligence in order to sense and respond to the disruption. Disruption in the market will only increase because of technology capability improvements and the imagination of the consumer. This imagination and experimentation will increase the disruption as the new generations increase their involvement in the market.

We are seeing now a dramatic increase in market participation by millennials and gen-x and in turn the market must be prepared to incorporate their reactions and demands. As for sensing the demands, there is so much information available now in the market based on the online habits that there is really no way to sift through this vast amount of data to succeed in reacting and meeting the demands without Artificial Intelligence. We are seeing now the results of poor the poor sense and respond capabilities in the marketplace with legacy brick and mortar retailers struggling with the disruption and lurching from one attempt to react to another. The market itself and the consumers have moved on before these retailers can react. This is essentially a real time demonstration of the disruption in action and this will only increase in velocity.

The key disrupting factor now is mobile technology and how the younger generations are using this technology to support their lifestyle demands. This disruption has increased in velocity as the concepts are proven by early adopters and then spread through other consumer groups. Based on the embrace of mobile technology, what was once a strategic weapon is now almost a strategic albatross, I’m speaking of the number of brick and mortar stores. This embrace of mobile technology requires an equal embrace of the omni channel shopping experience by the large retailers. The current major disruption rolling through the retail market is related to the demands of consumers for a true omni channel experience. The retailers struggling are the larger retailers that have been slow to invest in technology to develop the experience.

Now we are seeing the results of this shopping disruption, especially in the large department store sector, where the early adapters are succeeding and the late adaptors are struggling! The struggling retailers are seeing the results of previous strategic practices to hold off on investment until the market settles and the winning technology has been selected by the market. As a result of the velocity of change in technology and use of the technology the winning technology is not selected by the market, instead the technology is embraced and usage of the technology modified and enhanced based on the users of the technology.

I see that the most significant disrupting factor in the market now is not related to technology use by the marketplace but related to the technology use by consumers within the market. Consumers have now turned the table on the market by developing methods that must be adopted by the market and retailers rather than the market pushing capabilities to the consumer. This is really where consumers are driving the market and this is also the most significant opportunity for a retailer such as Amazon or now Wal Mart to really reshape the relationship with the consumer and in doing this reshaping the market itself.