What's Next For Supply Chains Scrambled By The Pandemic?

The emergency created by COVID-19 has stimulated innovation, creativity and novel ways of structuring tasks, organizations and systems. In the midst of this worldwide crisis, it is hard to assess what temporary measures will become more permanent - or will morph into something else.

- Bart Edes

But we need to consider what might come next when the light at the end of the tunnel becomes an open sky. As our eyes adjust, we may find ourselves somewhere vaguely familiar but at the same time, distinctly different than what we knew only months ago.

Let’s start with supply chains, which have been seriously rattled during the pandemic. In the first months of the year, governments adopted a flurry of restrictive measures to curtail the spread of COVID-19. Demand plummeted and economies contracted as nonessential businesses were closed, travel bans imposed and cross-border movement curtailed.

The result was a severe disruption of the networks between many companies and their suppliers. Nowhere was this more visible than in the markets for essential medical and health-related goods, including personal protective equipment, ventilators, COVID-19 testing kits, medicines and disinfectants. Where supply chains for these precious goods remained functional, demand exploded, leaving many prospective buyers frustrated and desperate.

In the United States, where I am based, local, state, and federal authorities frantically searched for supplies, often looking to Asia to fulfill the urgent new requirements of overwhelmed hospitals and other health facilities.