Supply Chain Fundamental Rethinking

For a decade or more the world of Business and Supply Chain has been acclimatizing itself with the VUCA world. VUCA being an acronym for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex & Ambiguous. Supply Chain strategies & operations have always been anchored around VUCA. As has been abundantly proven since the onset of 2016 Trade war between US & China followed by the Pandemic and more recently the military operation of Russia in Ukraine, the world is not a VUCA world anymore. Rather is has passed that stage of VUCA to represent a new world reality of future. I think FICA   is the way to perceive & act on the future order of Supply Chain. FICA for me is Fragile, Intricate, Chaotic & Anxious F - Fragile - It is more than abundantly proven in the recent past that Supply Chains have been found to be Fragile. I shall explain this in a minute with an example. In late 70s and early 80s the world found (due to organizations like WTO) that there can be an opportunity for a global Suppl...

Demand is the trigger for the Supply side of the Supply Chain. Supply side Strategies, Tactical plans & Operational execution activities are predominantly a function of the Demand side of the Supply Chain. The sanctity of the demand figure goes a long way in determining the performance of the Supply side. When it comes to accountability though, in many instances the Demand subordinates itself to the dynamics (or chaos!!) of the market place while Supply side is always the one which bears the brunt of not being able to meet the demand. More often than not, Supply side of the organization has experiences similar to what the Indian Healthcare system is experiencing at this very moment. I see a lot of analogies which can be leveraged to improve enterprise Supply Chains holistically. a. Demand is random but Supply is a Structure - Demand arises randomly, particularly if its a New Product. Responding to such cases the Supply side very efficiently develops new sources of supply, creates...

A predominant feature being observed during Covid-19 is ingenious solutions being worked out to tide over the situation. A lot of Supply Chains from various sectors have found temporary ways to overcome the challenges. While solutions have been undertaken as a measure to respond to Covid-19, the history of Supply Chain responses to events like that tend to indicate that Temporary responses have a tendency to stay Permanent. I wish if that is thought through by the Traditional next door retailer outlet. A case in point is consumer side of the Retail Supply Chain. The "Brick & Mortar" Supply Chain is back with the next door retail shop returning to be the primary (rather the only) place of buying stuff. In India, over the years while the "e" platforms or organized retail formats have been rolled out over the years, they have co-existed with the traditional retail shops. During Covid-19 situation this seems to be a blessing in disguise. The existence of the n...

Supply Chains have experienced the Wave 1 (http://blog.think-spark.com/2020/04/wave-effect-of-covid-19-on-supply-chain.html )& Wave 2 (http://blog.think-spark.com/2020/04/wave-effect-of-covid-19-on-supply-chain_14.html) impact of Covid-19. The delayed impacts of various nodes of Supply Chains leading into next waves of impact will commence here onward. Futuristic statements dampening the negative ramification of the event probably will be vociferously communicated with balancing pessimistic outlook statements. In my opinion making any forecasts can only make astrology be a respectable profession. Hence let those be made by the people who have to live off those professions. We are in the middle of Wave 3 & Supply Chain professionals need to only model the events which have occurred so far & navigate the Supply Chain going forward. The importance of being able to connect the various events into a logical analysis will be the key for most of the Supply Chain Professi...

Covid - 19 first wave effect which sparked with China, being the factory of the world, created a disruption for many Supply Chains.(http://blog.think-spark.com/2020/04/wave-effect-of-covid-19-on-supply-chain.html). Wave 1 effect has now evolved into Wave 2 effect. China is back full steam & many Chinese enterprises have commenced manufacturing operations. It has offered the rest of world a ray of hope to define timelines to bounce-back from the Covid-19 disruption. That is a great news. Once the manufacturing operations commence, Chinese suppliers & in turn their customer organizations may breathe a sigh of relief. How long will it last is the question? In the Wave 2 of the effect of Covd-19 on Supply Chains, at some stage the Chinese suppliers will face a couple challenges.  a) Their customers rolling plans for purchase will get differed. This shall happen due to the cascading effect which started with Wave 1. The short term demand side activity of the buying ...

It was February 2020 and companies were figuring out what was Covid 19. All that Supply Chain practitioners were able to decode was that their suppliers in China had suspended operations for a while due to a novel virus which had spread in the country. At that point in time, the rest of the world was producing and customers buying. And that was good news. The bad news was Supply constraints were envisaged to be the bottleneck to run the business, as usual.  Naturally there was a frenzy of an activity to get material from China. Panic buttons were pressed, predominantly by the Senior Management driven through the lenses of loss of business in absence of material, so additional quantity of purchases were approved as well as premiums were paid for logistics arrangements. Purchase Managers were working overnight, cajoling their China suppliers, figuring out how to get the inland transportation organized within China and a lot of work went into ensuring that the goods leave the sh...