Supply Chain Fundamental Rethinking

From a low of 20,000 in mid- February 2021 to 3,50,000 by April week 3.  Demand surge of Covid+ new cases is what Indian Healthcare Supply Chain is coping up with to keep its Patients get what they need. Demand Planning which is the trigger for the entire Supply side of the Supply Chain to organize itself to meet the market within its SLA's again has been found wanting in its (in)accuracy! And as it stands today in India, the Demand Planning accuracy seems to have been much lower than desired. A few key insights from the current stage of Covid-19 viewed from the lenses of Demand Planning, a. Never underestimate the importance of History - "This time its different" is a misnomer. Human history is of similar behaviours exhibited over multiple instances spread over different time periods. Historical data is a goldmine for Demand Planning. e.g. Relating this to Covid-19 - No time in the history of past 400 years of Pandemics (just 400 years as I did only study those 400 yea...

Supply Chain is at a Strategic Inflection Point. It's not going to suffice to just make tactical changes to the existing way of perceiving but a fundamental and radical change in way of thinking is what I think is the need. Many a times in the life of an organisation or an individual, a deep fundamental understanding of what he or she does everyday has to be changed. This is not a change in "jargon" so that old jargon is replaced with new one without changing the underlying premises and beliefs. Supply Chain I would imagine is at that cross road where, to sustain in future, Supply Chain Leaders have to make an "non-elastic" change . Supply Chain as a term for me has an implied meaning of being a "Chain which focuses on Supply(ies)." The major issue here is if we go down the level of the belief system of a practitioner, "Chain" means inter-linkages with lesser degrees of freedom. Each link of the chain is tightly integrated with the ...