Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant, Dennis Howlett of Diginomica, Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras, Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research and Tamas Hevizi of Automation Anywhere.
This time it is Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters.
We talk about how the pandemic severely stressed so many supply chains – PPE, toilet paper, anything China sourced, the cold chain for food and now vaccine distribution among others. Yet, we somehow coped and moved so much of the flow from brick and mortar to ecommerce. Bob describes the war rooms many companies set up to cope.
We discuss how many companies have reacted to both the demand and supply shocks - rethinking historical demand forecasts, simplification and reduction of product choice with rationalization of multiple product SKUs and BOMs. How companies are rethinking global supply chains (with strategies like China+1 or 2 or 3) and re-location of manufacturing to increase resilience.
We next talk about the cold chain which has been challenged all year - first with food distribution challenges now with the daunting COVID vaccine logistics, while simultaneously coping with the holiday shipping load.
Bob describes several of the supply chain planning and execution technologies he has been impressed with, that have helped enterprises cope with the unprecedented stress.
It truly is a riveting conversation about the acrobatics it has taken the supply chain community to keep us hundreds of millions of us fed, sheltered, entertained during 2020 and the many changes we are likely to see in 2021.
