When the supply chain breaks down, it disrupts business performance. In this past year of COVID-19-impacted business, those companies that adapted their supply chains quickly to manage through market uncertainty, order fluctuations, and new ways of working were rewarded with positive financial results and business growth.
The supply chain lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic are clearly relevant to best practices in supply chain management in 2021:
- Agility: Structure your supply chain to adjust to the flow of goods and materials. This past year showed us there are many uncertainties to manage through on a daily and weekly basis. Your supply chain should have the agility to keep pace with changes in consumer demand and market fluctuations. Course corrections are inherent to supply chain management as conditions change, and you need to be able to control the controllables.
- Holistic ecosystems work more smoothly: Multiple handoffs in supply chains were a financial liability in 2020. Our experience is that it’s crucial to think end-to-end in the entire supply chain. It’s not enough to get more space on an ocean vessel without addressing landside infrastructure challenges like port congestion, labor shortages, and distribution center congestion — all of these segments need to be thought through end-to-end. Those companies that partner with true end-to-end providers attain better performance than isolated approaches with their inherent multiple handoffs, entailing extra coordination, cost, and risk.
- Omnichannel fulfillment will grow: The growth of e-commerce and its reach into store delivery, consumer home delivery, and distribution center restocking will continue to grow as we enter the “next normal.” Those warehousing and distribution providers that have strong omnichannel capabilities and warehouse management systems will continue to set the pace.
- Societal good: Our industry has played an important societal role in the COVID-19 pandemic by keeping supply chains operating this past year. In 2021, it is incumbent upon all of us to continue to create new and better solutions to constantly evolve supply chain performance. Vaccine logistics will be a high-profile opportunity to show our industry’s vital role.