One of the pandemic’s clearest lessons to business is that global supply chain strategies must be more flexible and agile. For the past several years, macroeconomic-driven business dynamics have forced global supply chains to be redefined and reshaped across every industry.
Many supply chains are still designed extremely lean to maximize efficiency. While lean supply chains strive to constantly reduce lead times and inventory, incentivizing a race to the lowest-cost option, the pandemic exposed the importance of building resilience into these historically lean supply chain models.
Cost is, and always will be, a critically important consideration, but supply chains must find the right balance of efficiency and resilience to mitigate future disruption. In many ways, supply chain resilience can be viewed like insurance. The idea is to minimize the impact of potential points for failure in the supply chain. At the same time, more customers have heightened requirements for sustainability. They want manufacturers to reduce end-to-end lead times and emissions while designing eco-friendly products with extended lifecycles and reuse in mind.
