I spoke on a webinar for Today’s Medical Developments, Aerospace Manufacturing & Design, and Today’s e-Mobility on looking at the supply chain heading into 2022. Listen to the webinar here. Supply chain is the hot topic across the board. The answer is NO, supply chain will not get caught up anytime soon, certainly not before year-end and the holiday season. With that said, if you are waiting for supply chain to get caught up, you will be left in the dust. The proactive executives are not waiting for things to go back to normal. Instead, they are creating a next normal.
One Tip to Implement This Week:
In the webinar, we’ll address what will happen in supply chain in 2022:
- Reconfiguration: Smart clients are reevaluating and reconfiguring the supply chain to be more responsive to customer needs while mitigating risk and scaling successfully.
- Rules and regulations: As rules and restrictions change and evolve, the supply chain changes. For example, drivers have had many new regulations in picking up at the CA ports. There is a federal law dictating how many hours a driver can be “on” during the day (which is problematic with port delays). There are CA laws dictating how new the truck must be which is a large issue for owner operators (the majority of truckers picking up). And there are many more….. If it is simply too hard to navigate, businesses find alternatives.
- Evolving customer needs: Customers will not wait for these extended lead times for extended periods of time. Customer needs will evolve, and we will need to get ahead of what the changing situation will look like.
- Rapid innovation: The most progressive clients are innovating with speed and fury. Are they in lock step with customer needs?
- Great resignation: How will the great resignation impact the supply chain?
- Digitization of the supply chain: How will digitization impact the supply chain? And in which areas? For example, some ports (unions) will not allow digitization and most (if not all) of the current legislation and funding for ports will not support infrastructure if not unionized. A bit of a catch 22.
The bottom line is we need to be thinking ahead, innovating, and collaborating to be successful – or perhaps to simply survive. Please keep us in the loop of your situation and how we can help your organization successfully navigate the current volatility and emerge above and beyond. Several of these types of topics are included in our new eBook Emerging Above and Beyond: 21 Insights for 2021 from Manufacturing, Supply Chain & Technology Executives. Download your complimentary copy.
