This past year was one of unimaginable disruption in the global supply chain; at a given time, more than 60 ships with over 450,000 containers were floating outside the port of Los Angeles for weeks awaiting docking and unloading.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major disrupter, it wasn’t the only one. Our failure to learn and adapt fast enough to external changes is the real culprit. International trade is an elaborate system, and to function properly, all parties must learn and adapt to deal with disruptions to ensure predictable delivery of goods.
Looking ahead, 2022 will be another year of system adjustments in the supply chain if we are to resume relative predictability and adapt to the various external changes that resulted in this incredible backlog. Consumers in the US will continue to consume and order even more products online. Traders must adjust, as smaller orders shipping directly to consumers will continue the exponential growth of the last several years. Consumers enjoy the ease and convenience of ordering online, and this too is a significant change in the supply chain system.
COVID-19 will continue to rage, causing unexpected delays all around the world, and carriers, terminals, chassis providers, warehouses, labor, forwarders, brokers, governments, and all the involved parties in the chain must meet these and other challenges in a coordinated fashion.
To do so, we must learn to share our thinking — and suspend our assumptions about the “cause” of the latest disruption — so that together, we can find a systemic approach, as each participant in the supply chain has a stake in the long-term outcome. Defending opinions and assumptions about how to unclog the mess will not help and could continue the spiral of “fixes that fail,” as one party or another implements a fix that fails to solve the system’s underlying problems.
All the parties must find a new kind of communication among themselves, a shared dialogue to force a new future that gets the system humming again. No one group, party, or even external event caused the backlogs at our ports, and understanding this and working together to craft new ways of sharing thoughts and ideas will be the only way to bring about positive change.
There is much at risk if we cannot engage in peaceful trade, and the need to untangle the mess at our ports is urgent.