Supply chains delivering goods and food suffered a shock to the system after President Trump declared a national emergency on March 13 and stores closed, panic buyers emptied shelves and trucks were held up waiting for quarantined officials to reopen weigh stations at state borders.
It better now.
Goods are mostly being transported domestically and globally in as normal a process as can be expected with almost 20 million people around the world infected with novel coronavirus. Shelves are mostly stocked again.
Dr. Margaret Kidd is Program Director of Supply Chain and Logistics at the University of Houston, and says current conditions portend well for the future.
“Unless we are looking at another lockdown in the fall, we should be seeing a U-shaped recovery sometime in 2021, or possibly 4th quarter,” she tells KTRH News. Kidd says when people feel confident in their employment status they spend more, and believes rising employment numbers and reliable movement of goods indicate holiday shopping needs will be smooth.
97% of global companies say they are planning to boost supply chain resilience.
Resilience will mean diversification. “You cannot produce critical material in one country. You have got to diversify where your suppliers are located and know your suppliers’ suppliers’ location,” Kidd adds. She says for America a better choice than China and the Far East may be to move on-shoring and some near-shoring to locations in Central and South America, both of which offer low production costs.
So now that the whole has been shaken into the realization of a need to transform supply chains and logistics, so far, 52% say they haven’t even started yet.
https://www.houston.org/news/countering-covid-19-disruptions-supply-chain-resiliency