Abir G. Thakurta, VP, Supply Chain, Havertys

https://havertys.com/
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Abir G. Thakurta

No industry, geography, or channel has been spared from supply chain disruption as the COVID-19 pandemic has spread. While the world continues to battle the virus, we continue to figure out how to outmaneuver uncertainty into 2021. There are a number of lessons to be learnt and addressed, broadly outlined below.

Talent. If we do not have the “right” talent driving our supply chain, we are already losing. “Right” here does not mean somebody who is an expert in supply chain, but rather a team of people operating with resilience and flexibility. We continue to search for talent in the market.

Systems, technology, and data. This pandemic has proved that working with system, technology, or data constraints adds non-value-added work and increases the complexity of the uncertainty exponentially. Visibility and analytics technologies are key to answering critical questions.

Strategic partnerships. It is imperative to ensure that all partners are orchestrating in unison and executing on our strategy to push forward during these uncertain times. We will continue to create win-win scenarios with our partners (factories and logistics partners) based on service/price balance.

Communication. Clear, consistent, concise, and cohesive communication (the 4C strategy) is critical internally and externally within our supply chain. Eliminating ambiguity becomes critical when dealing with partners who need clear direction.

Agility and responsiveness with resilience. We need an agile, resilient, and flexible culture in our supply chain these days. Being agile involves responding profitably to variable consumer demand, planning with the assumption that plans must be continuously altered and focusing on execution daily with available information. Course correction is inevitable.

A prolonged black swan event like this only highlights issues within our supply chains. When this pandemic is over, we need to make sure we focus on those gaps, fix those issues, and build a supply chain (with people, process, technologies, partners) that is agile and resilient to the next disruption.