You know the saying “the only thing that doesn’t change is change itself”. It is proving to be true once again during these pandemic days. The already difficult job of managing a supply chain has turned into a nightmare. Closed factories, locked-down cities, banned travel, disrupted logistics… This isn’t something easy to deal with but starting with our mindset, we have to change and adapt to this new world.
This started long before Coronavirus. With the trade wars taking place globally, some companies didn’t want to put all their eggs in a single basket. They kept an open mind and even though sourcing mainly revolves around cost, they started to diversify their supplier base.
This helped them achieve great flexibility in their supply chain while maintaining consistency. Not having to stop or delay production resulted in tremendous cost savings. They had an easier time when Covid-19 hit China first in January and then the rest of the world later on. I know this firsthand because as a company specialized in custom tins in Turkey, we helped them. They will also bounce back much faster when things get back to normal.
Fight against the virus has been going on for a few months now. Countries are slowly starting to relax the restrictions to get back to normal. It happened so fast that we won’t know the economic impact right away. Companies are developing short term solutions but soon they will need long term strategies.
They need to ask themselves, “should I leave everything as it is or should I change?”. The answer should be crystal clear. Change is inevitable and that change today will come from diversification of your supply chain and getting rid of your single country risk. And it’s not just about a viral pandemic but sudden regulatory changes, environmental disasters, raw material shortages or any other disruption that isn’t obvious to us today. The question is not if but when.