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Showing posts from July, 2019

Realigning the Supply Chains - Impact of Trade Wars

Realigning the Supply Chains, ( http://blog.think-spark.com/2019/07/realigning-supply-chains.html ) first driver - Impact of Trade Wars - is a kind of long term, mostly irreversible and a relatively permanent event. Tariffs have a history of being implemented as a temporary affair but staying permanent. One reason for that is increased tariffs lead to increased revenue for the government. Governments factor that increased revenue in their income calculations. This is one of the reasons for Tariffs to get imposed as a temporary measure to distract something but stay relatively permanent. Evidence suggests that Trade War will have more than temporary impact on Supply Chains. My guess is that Supply Chain need to appreciate it holistically. A couple of impact areas that I see are,   a. Supply Chain Costs are set to rise due to Trade War. e.g. commodity costs are purely driven by Demand - Supply. A country which produces the highest quantity of steel is unable to consume...

Realigning the Supply Chains

Supply Chain leaders have reached the crossroad, much faster than expected! By the time, Supply Chains stabilized post the 2008 crises, it is time for a paradigm shift, again. There has been no time in the past which is so pressing for the need to "Realign the Supply Chains" as it stands now, particularly, if you are an India based Supply Chain.  My personal reading is that Realignment is not a jargon to be used but a reality to be embraced by the Supply Chain practitioners. "This time its different" will probably be a truth to be taken in your stride and not extend too much of "past" references into probable "future" Supply Chain. I see four reasons for the need to realign a) Impact of Trade Wars b) Impact of Indian Government Initiatives c) Surfacing of competition from unknown quarters d) Emerging technologies driving Supply Chain realignment In the recently held ET Edge Logistics & Supply Chain Summit, I spoke on Re...