What's a resilient supply chain and how to get there?

here is just so much learning we got from the Covid-19 pandemic. One of them being that we were absolutely not prepared, and it showed immediately in our supply chain. Majority of organizations immediately scaled back down, held on to their money and stopped all growth related investments. For 2 years, we were busy trying to find raw material, containers and factories able to carry out orders.

Covid-19 showed us our weaknesses, it is now time to re-shape our supply chain to be stronger, more agile and overall more resilient.

1) What is a resilient supply chain?
2) The best way to make your supply chain more resilient
3) The benefits of the resilient supply chain

What is a resilient supply chain?

Let’s be very clear, at this point we should all know it’s apriority to make our supply chain stronger. And if you don’t have this at the top of your priority list for this year, please do.

First thing first. What is a resilient supply chain? It’s a supply chain that can resist and recover from disruptions. And today especially, after the massive impact of Covid-19, which a majority of organizations were not ready to face, we know that’s the number 1 topic. And be aware that if our attention was directed at Covid-19 for the past 2 years, and if surely it is a massive disruption that weakened our industry, there are so many more risks out there threatening your business.

A risk could be a new aggressive competitor or even a change in consumer behavior. Disruptions can come from anywhere, at anytime. The resilient supply chain will be able to identify these risks before they ever happen, and then will resist disruptions and recover from them quickly.

The best way to make your supply chain more resilient

Being able to see disruptions coming relies on your aptitude in reading the data. Which implies you have a digital and centralized way of capturing data and the right technology to analyze it.

Technology that will help to plan your supply chain, connecting all parts together in real-time, and then to be able to forecast and anticipate, and finally solve challenges pro-actively.

Resilient supply chain tackles operational weaknesses in depth. It’s a completely different way of approaching our industry and processes. Key word here is pro activity and risk management. And only technologies give you the edge to be able to get total visibility over your intricate network of suppliers and partners.

By mapping your supply chain and retrieving data from all partners in real-time you get a true and instant visualization of what’s happening and what potentially will happen. In order to achieve data you will have to look into cloud technologies that centralize your information and real-time technologies that allow you to visualize your supply chain and get an instant understanding of each of your milestones, through real-time status and updates. The blockchain is also slowly becoming more and more relevant to make supply chains more secured and agile.

The benefits of resilient supply chain

Improving your supply chain’s resilience will help you increase your efficiency. Your operation is strengthened, simplified and result driven. You improve your productivity, as supply chain resilience is based on data and a performance driven setup.

And finally, you increase agility and visibility which allows you to have a deeper understanding and awareness of risks threatening your business.

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