Building resilient supply chains

By Sankalpa Bhattacharjya, Partner and Leader, Deals Strategy and Operations

Supply chain resilience is what organizations are focusing on in the post-COVID world. As road, rail and air services virtually came to a standstill during the lockdown, logistics systems pivoted to multimodal, multi-source and multichannel – all enabled by the increased adoption of technology.

After languishing for years, rail movement and coastal shipping are very likely to finally play an increasingly important role in the movement of goods, as companies look to reduce supply chain costs and improve service levels. Companies are also looking at more distributed manufacturing and smaller spoke warehouses for faster deliveries and reduced stockout risks. Direct-to-customer and e-commerce models are also seeing increased adoption – even in traditionally distributor-led industries like FMCG.

Lastly, technology adoption in the supply chain is undoubtedly going to transform the way goods move. Technology aggregator platforms – across trucking, warehousing and freight forwarding – will be able to better match demand and supply while reducing costs. IT solutions to seamlessly align the trinity of sales, supply chain and production are going to see greater adoption. Analytics and artificial intelligence can help transporters optimise networks and routes while reducing wastage and pilferage. Warehouse automation and management solutions are also seeing more inquiries – leading to efficiency and throughput increase, reduced manual processing and errors, and lower running costs.

In every crisis lies an opportunity – and for the supply chain, COVID-19 is finally resulting in some much-needed rethinking.