The world has changed For years now, supply chain blogs and articles have invariably begun with a statement about the changing world. There certainly has been been plenty going on in the past years, and even the causes themselves are changing. Whereas we used to be able to blame the increasing uncertainty and volatility on changing consumer...
Just as we all thought that life was slowly returning to normal and we could congratulate ourselves on surviving the COVID-19 disruption, the conflict in the Ukraine has reared its ugly head. But even when that's over, it will inevitably be followed by another, equally unexpected disruption. If you want to minimize fire-fighting and maximize...
Why did the COVID-19 pandemic take so many companies by surprise? And, more importantly, how can your organization anticipate – and deal with – disruption more successfully next time around? Because one thing’s for sure: there will be a next time!
The world has changed. Are we heading towards the ‘old normal’, the ‘new normal’ or the ‘new abnormal’? No one knows, but let’s focus on looking ahead and keeping it relevant. It seems that the term ‘resilience’ is suddenly being presented – and not always appropriately – as the best solution for surviving the current crisis. Thankfully, supply...
The word ‘resilience’ suddenly seems to be cropping up everywhere – and not only in relation to supply chain. It’s as if resilience is being presented as the key to surviving the current crisis in almost every context. So am I going to argue against resilience in this article? No, definitely not. I fully agree that supply chain resilience (because...
The unprecedented increases in energy prices continue to make headlines across Europe. Over the coming year, consumers could end up paying 50% more for gas and electricity. The effects on businesses are also becoming clear; a number of manufacturers of products including artificial fertilizer and aluminium have already scaled back their production...
It is now over a year ago since – with the global credit crisis still relatively fresh in people’s minds – the world suddenly went into lockdown. The COVID-19 virus created a crisis within many nations’ healthcare systems, plus the economy came close to meltdown: shops were forced to closed, factories shut down and supply chains suffered severe...
The SCM webinar on Supply Chain Resilience was held on Wednesday 2 December. It was moderated by Martijn Lofvers (Supply Chain Media) who interviewed Alfons Willemsen, a partner at Involvation. The webinar was inspired by an article that Alfons wrote in early October (Read here: supply-chain-resilience-hype-or-lifestyle). As underlined by the...
To help organizations recognize and effectively deal with good and bad variability, Involvation has developed the Wheel of Five for Supply Chain Management. Following on from the introduction, this article outlines the first case study illustrating a Wheel of Five guideline: ‘Avoid overload’. If it’s no longer possible to guarantee on-time...
This summer Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands hit the headlines for the wrong reasons. For the duration of an entire morning, no flights were able to depart from the airport – which is also a military base – because of issues in the military air traffic control tower. Stranded passengers were forced to wait outside in the heat because there...