Ellery's Essays

Why We Need to Build Supply Chains

Enterprises are planning to rebuild their supply chains in the wake of the pandemic of 2020.

Well, no, not really.

Many enterprises are planning to resume production and boost inventories in the aftermath of the COVID19 pandemic.¹ Some firms will narrow their product lines to those that are in high demand (e.g. toilet paper). Others will stock up on raw materials and seek vendors that are nearer to their production sites as alternatives to risky international sources.

Not many firms, however, plan to build or rebuild supply chains. I don’t blame them.

Building a supply chain is not an attractive option, at least at first glance. Most enterprises work within existing supply chains and would not outright see a good reason to build one that overlaps with other organisations.

Enterprises would likely focus internally in their own operations if there’s any supply chain building that needs to be done. And even then, enterprise executives would hesitate to do any major change if they perceive it would entail too much work and cost that wouldn’t reap much beneficial return.

Some companies in the past did try to rebuild their supply chains. They called it “re-engineering” and it was popular in the 1990’s. The idea was to redesign business operations from scratch and then apply sweeping changes to existing operations.

It didn’t last long.² Many companies ended up downsizing instead of changing. A lot of people lost their jobs and companies didn’t realize much of any reward. Re-engineering quickly lost its luster as fast as it was introduced.

Some consultants, academics, and information technology (IT) vendors still push for re-engineering though they avoid the term. Some pitch IT platforms such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to drive operations improvements.³ Alas, ERP and other similar platforms have not been as successful as hoped. Many projects have fallen to the wayside.

Many enterprises took to managing supply chains than into re-engineering them. They sought talented people who’d know how to regulate inventories, negotiate with vendors, process orders, and make sure operations would comply with the latest environmental sustainability rules and occupational safety & health guidelines. Executives also placed hopes that supply chain managers can lead in implementing new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Supply chain management had become the norm. Re-engineering was forgotten.

Then the pandemic came.

Enterprise executives know that supply chains need to change in the aftermath of COVID19. And it isn’t just because of COVID19. Before that, it was the tariff war between the United States and China that turned global trade upside down, not to mention similar disputes such as the British exit (Brexit) from the European Union. There were also the supply and price fluctuations in commodities from metals, rare earths, to crude oil. There were also the natural disasters. There were also the cyber-security data breaches. And there were also the numerous upstart entrepreneurs who were introducing technologies such as drones, ride-sharing, video-streaming, and ecommerce mobile apps that threatened traditional businesses.

Enterprises had to accept: supply chains, especially the global ones, were vulnerable. They don’t work well in a disruptive environment. The pandemic proved it. All one had to see were the idle factories, closed warehouses, shut stores, and empty shelves. The present supply chain set-up no longer applies.

Building supply chains isn’t really that hard and expensive. Sure, it requires investment but just like supply chain management, the key is talent. One just has to employ the right people with the right talent. The good news is that the talent is there in front of us, ready to work and available. They are the industrial engineers; they have the tools and the skills and whom I’d rather call supply chain engineers.

It’s not management but engineering that would drive the building of supply chains. Engineers build things. That’s their role. Managers don’t do building; that’s not their role.

The process of building supply chains is not too far off from constructing a factory or warehouse. One has to have a plan, a timeline, and a full list of resources and costs. And one has to have a engineer with the expertise and leadership to design and oversee.

The difference lies in the nature and scope. Whereas a facility such as an office and warehouse lies within the bounds of an enterprise, a supply chain encompasses the stream of products and services that crosses organisations and borders.

A supply chain is like a river. Build a dam and that’s a facility at a point in the river, with the purpose of harnessing the river’s water. Building the supply chain involves setting up systems and facilities along the river to ensure the continuous and sustainable flow of water from start to finish.

The supply chain engineer works not only with stakeholders within the enterprise but with stakeholders from other enterprises, such as but not limited to vendors and customers. The engineer identifies and designs what needs to be built along the supply chain river.

Most of what would be built first would likely be the networks and systems that link along the supply chain stream*. The engineer would seek the optimal design that would synchronise and sustain flow that would uphold competitive standards of reliability, quality, and versatility.

The 2020 pandemic is the latest in the series of 21^st century disruptions to supply chains. It was the worst and it won’t be the last. Enterprises who realize that their supply chains are vulnerable and need to be built with engineering talent would be on the right track to reviving their competitive edge.

*Note: I wrote a similar blog in LinkedIn in July 2019 in which I stressed structures in supply chain building.

About Overtimers Anonymous

I’ve been immersed in work since 1984. My long-spanning career since graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee include managerial assignments at P&G Philippines, a harrowing experience as an entrepreneur in freight logistics, participation in several successful consultancy projects, and finally as an administrator of a company that builds and leases warehouses and offices.

Overtimers Anonymous is a blog about the experiences many of us have in our professional lives and how we can become more productive. (A long time ago, OA was a newsletter about the social lives of young professionals; but that was really a long time ago).

I write quite a bit about supply chains. Supply chains are product and service streams that run around the world. They cover just about everything that has to do with getting, making, and delivering stuff from one place to the next.

Because supply chains haven’t really been doing so well recently [circa 2020], I’m hoping that this blog, for all what it’s worth, would also offer some help for enterprises in finding ways to make things better.

And why do I call it Overtimers Anonymous? Because many of us who work are in our jobs more than eight hour a day and are more often than not unseen.

If you want to pick my brains for information and ideas, please feel free to contact me (ellery_l@yahoo.com) or drop me a text at +639178353546. [I’m also on Viber and Messenger].

E. S. Lim

“Are You Happy With Our Service?”

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

A bank had a survey booth near its front door in which one drops a small plastic ball in either of two (2) slots:

Happy With Our Service
Unhappy With Our Service

I dropped the ball on the Happy slot. The teller was courteous and polite and since I was just updating a passbook, I was in and out of the bank in just a few minutes.

But I’m not really happy with the bank.

The bank recently announced it won’t allow online tax payments in the evenings and over the weekends. I thought this was ridiculous since the point of having an online payment system was to have available banking services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Going to the bank to deposit money and pay bills had also become a time-wasting experience. Lines can be long and the time spent can run up to several hours. Tellers would tell me that the bank’s computer system was slow.

But despite it all, the bank’s tellers were always polite and courteous, although sometimes they’d have a hard time smiling as they’d be overworked with the unending influx of customers. The bank hasn’t hired extra tellers since it opened some years back and even as its number of customers grew tenfold.

The bank’s service is good. Its system of management is not.

Beating the No-Win Scenario

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB_UtemSm3s

In the movie, Star Trek: the Wrath of Khan, Lieutenant Saavik (played by Kirstie Alley) asks Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner) how he handled a no-win scenario called the Kobiyashi Maru when he was a cadet at the Starfleet Academy. It turns out Kirk is the only cadet in Starfleet history who ever beat the no-win scenario. “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario,” he replied when Saavik opined Kirk didn’t face the point of the simulation, which is to train cadets to face the prospect of losing and death. (The Wrath of Khan, 1982, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB_UtemSm3s)

Our work, and more so our life, can feel like a no-win scenario.

We sometimes feel we are stuck. We want to earn more money but we can’t. We want to travel but we can’t. We want to have more time but we can’t.

We want to start a new business but we don’t have enough capital. We want to travel but our employer doesn’t allow us enough vacation leave. We want to make a change in how things are done at work, but we can’t seem to get people to cooperate.

We read from the news and social media how other people become successful. There are entrepreneurs who started small and are now earning big. There are the blog writers who have millions of followers in social media. There are the very happy families who seem to have all the time in the world to travel together. There are the companies where improvements in products and processes are happening in real time.

We wonder how they do it. And we say we can’t do what they did because they were lucky or rich in the first place. They had the resources, we didn’t. They had the opportunities, we didn’t. They have the talent, we don’t. They have the upper management support, we don’t.

When we do try and end up failing, we believe more strongly we can’t win. We can’t progress. We’re stuck.

But we can be whatever we want to be once we realize we can change ourselves or the environment we live in.

We can adapt or we can change the rules of the game of real-life.

A lot of people stress innovation and guts. But I believe It starts with initiative and confidence. One just needs to begin by saying “I can do it.”

“Change your world.”

Robert McCall, The Equalizer, played by Denzel Washington (The Equalizer, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsGTnJM1O4g)

Seizing Opportunity and Addressing Adversity via Supply Chain Engineering

We should not focus just on adversity. We should also focus on opportunity. We tend to point to adversity when there’s disruption. But as much as there is adversity behind every disruption, there is also opportunity.

This should be common business sense but it can be difficult to accept when there’s a raging disruption going on; something like a pandemic, for example.

It’s supply chains that often feel the highest impact when there’s a disruption. This is because supply chains are made up of vast interconnections within and between enterprises.

We blame all sorts of adversities for disruptions. Adversities can be natural like typhoons and tsunamis or they can be man-made like sudden price increases or an entrepreneur that introduces a new e-commerce app that challenges a traditional corporation’s business.

Disruptions, however, are also a result of opportunity. When an enterprise seizes an opportunity, it means more often than not disrupting its normal way of doing business to make way for a new idea.

In the early 1990’s, a company that used to deliver telegrams (i.e. short typed messages) decided to overhaul its operations and sell mobile phones. Today, Globe Telecom is one of the world’s leading telecommunications firms.

Netflix started as an online DVD (digital video-disc) rental company in 1997 and has transformed itself into a video entertainment streaming service and movie-production behemoth. Netflix caused disruption in the video rental service industry and is causing disruption to the traditional film-making industry. At the same time, Netflix disrupts its own enterprise by constantly changing its business model.

Disruptions are the new normal, especially for supply chains. And since just about every enterprise depends on supply chains, there has never been a greater need for Supply Chain Engineering.

Supply Chain Engineering is about building supply chains with the purpose of boosting productivity and adding versatility so enterprises can not only be competitive but also have the ability to transform.

Supply Chain Engineering is Industrial Engineering redefined. It isn’t scientific management. It is engineering as it stresses the design and setting up of supply chain systems and structures.

Supply Chain Engineering takes into account both adversity and opportunity. This is because as an engineering discipline, it focuses on putting up systems and structures that will support enterprise strategy. Engineers construct facilities and install equipment for enterprises to make available their products and services. In the same way, Supply Chain Engineers (SCEs) bring into reality supply chain systems and structures so enterprises can procure materials and deliver products and services to customers.

SCEs are challenged to develop supply chains into ones which will have the capability to change whether in response to adversity or to be ready when enterprises remodel themselves.

Disruption is the common denominator of adversity and opportunity. We tend to sometimes get too preoccupied with adversities such that we pass up opportunities. Our enterprises should be ready for both. And the best path to do to do is via Supply Chain Engineering.

What Have We Learned About Adversity vis-à-vis COVID19?

COVID19 is the latest and worst adversity to global economies in recent memory. Despite the early warnings in late 2019, enterprises around the world were caught off guard. Executives could only watch helplessly as borders closed and governments enforced lock-downs that shut many businesses down worldwide.

Despite all our talents, experiences, and knowledge, we were unable to prevent COVID19. What went wrong? What can we learn from this catastrophic experience?

First, we need to realize that COVID19 is not a single once-in-a-lifetime adversity. It is only one and the latest in a series of adversities.

For example, before COVID19, there were the Australian bush-fires that razed thousands of hectares of land and caused widespread environmental damage. Before that, there was the Hong Kong protests which disrupted financial transactions in Asia-Pacific. And at the same time, there was the United Kingdom’s chaotic exit, a.k.a. Brexit, from the European Union. And let’s not forget the United States’ sudden imposition of tariffs against China which disrupted international trade.

Second, adversities are never identical. They come in different shapes, sizes, and intensities. There can be visible or invisible, tangible or intangible. Each adversity is unique, a class by itself. They can last long or go away in a day. The 2011 Japan earthquake, for example, lasted just six (6) minutes but caused damage that took months for the country to recover from.

Third, adversities can be natural like typhoons and earthquakes or they can be man-made like trade tariffs and terrorism. They can be intentionally created such as when activists blocked a railway system at Canada, causing delays in shipments. They can also be the result of business and technological innovations such as the introduction of same-day drone deliveries.

Fourth, adversities happen frequently and unpredictably, in which most are low-profile or localized. A vendor delays his deliveries. A truck heading to a customer breaks down. Public utility transport operators stage a strike such that employees couldn’t go to work. A power failure shuts down a production line. The boss gets sick on the day of an important meeting with a customer.

Fifth, how big the disruptive effect of an adversity is dependent on the vulnerability of who or what it affects. When the Pope visited Manila in 2015, the government enforced a week-long ban on cargo trucks going to and from the Manila International Container Terminal (MICT). This caused delays in unloading of imported goods from container vessels. Shipping lines and truckers experienced losses. Enterprises who were waiting for deliveries but who stocked up with buffer inventories, however, did not feel much of an impact.

We can conclude adversities are part and parcel of daily life. They occur all the time, are never identical, and come in different intensities. Enterprises, their supply chains in particular, are most vulnerable to the disruptions resulting from adversities.

Enterprises have resorted to Risk Management to mitigate adversity but judging by the results, it has been less than effective. Enterprises would need to widen the scope.

What do we need to do to address adversity?

We need to change our mindset and our approach.

Supply Chains are All About Flow

Supply chains are about flow: the movement of product from one stage to the next, from a starting point—a source—to an endpoint—a user.

We call them product streams, demand flows, pipelines. But supply chains are hardly these as streams and pipelines imply a single fluid in motion. What flows in a supply chain is not the one same item but a multitude of merchandise: parts, materials, components, and products.

Items also never remain the same as they weave through supply chains. It is a basic point of supply chains that items change and never stay the same. And not change for the sake of change but for the purpose of transforming to something that becomes more valuable from that where it came. Solid ores become metals. Metals become jewellery, spare parts, and the support beams for high-rise buildings. Crude oil becomes petroleum which in turn becomes gasoline, motor oil, and plastics.

Supply chains converge and diverge. They rarely follow a straight line. Many see their items originate from other chains and disperse to others. For instance, bauxite joins with caustic soda and other materials coming from other supply chains and are transformed together in a manufacturing facility into aluminium. The aluminium in turn becomes material for other supply chains such as for cans for beverages, foil for kitchen wraps, and wire mesh for window screens.

Enterprises comprise most supply chains. A fruit farm ships to wholesalers who ships to supermarkets and grocery stores. In-between are transport providers and storage facilities.

Capacities limit how much can flow through supply chains. The limits are also known as constraints and bottlenecks.

Policies, procedures, and controls govern the flow of merchandise through supply chains. These vary from one supply chain stage to the next and to whomsoever has ownership of the territory the merchandise is moving through.

It should come to no wonder that flows are not steady or uniform. Merchandise flows in fits and starts and in different mixes of product composition. Flows are never identical from one instant to the next. In a sense, flows may not even be the right word to describe what happens through supply chains as more often than not, merchandise moves in batches, surges, and waves.

Boosting productivity in supply chains is therefore a monumental challenge given the complexities and underlying uncertainties.

It would be easier to design a plumbing system and electrical schematic than it is to plan a supply chain. At least with plumbing and electricals, the product stream is far more predictable and homogeneous. It definitely is not like that with supply chains.

The nature of supply chain flow by itself justifies the need for engineering prowess. It is a daunting challenge but one that supply chain engineers are in the best position to undertake.

About Overtimers Anonymous:

https://overtimersanonymous.home.blog/2020/04/30/about-overtimers-anonymous/

Admitting Not Knowing What to Do Is The First Step to Problem-Solving

At the height of the Second World War, Great Britain was on the brink of defeat. The Nazis had conquered the European mainland. German U-boat submarines were sinking merchant ships from America, constricting critical supplies to the United Kingdom. The German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, was bombing London and other British cities at will, inflicting heavy casualties. The British leadership didn’t know what to do.

The British government engaged the help of its most brilliant scientists to find technological breakthroughs that would perhaps give the English armed forces some advantage in weaponry. The scientists, consisting of physicists, mathematicians, and even biologists, found out that technology wasn’t the problem, but rather in the manner the military managed its operations.

For example, the scientists led by physicist Patrick Blackett¹, found that anti-aircraft (AA) batteries defending London were shooting pointlessly against German Luftwaffe bombers because only 30 out of 120 of the guns had access to radar data to track incoming targets. Blackett’s science group recommended re-deployment of the anti-aircraft batteries so all of the guns would have access to the radar data. Whereas before it took 20,000 AA rounds to shoot down a German bomber, the number was reduced to 4,000 rounds per shoot-down after the re-deployment. Anti-aircraft accuracy improved by 80%.

Blackett also introduced operational solutions to defeat the German U-boats. His colleague, E. J. Williams², also a physicist, suggested changes in how British bombers searched and targeted U-boats. By changing the timing and placing of depth charges, and by simply repainting planes from black to white to make them less likely to be spotted in the daytime sky, the British was able to increase the kill rate of U-boats from 1 to 2 per cent to 10 percent, a 1000% improvement.

British leaders at their darkest hour of the war admitted they didn’t know what to do. They went to their scientists for answers. When they did, they found out that the issue wasn’t about searching for the right answers but defining the problems rightly. By just knowing what problems to solve and solving them, the British and their Allies were able to defeat the Nazis and win the Second World War.

Eighty (80) years later, the world again is in a crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has sickened more than a million people and brought businesses to a halt. More than three (3) billion people worldwide are in lockdowns.

Despite the efforts, government and business leaders do not have a unified front versus the pandemic. They have engaged medical experts who have urged quarantines, personal hygiene, and social distancing. There is no prospect for an early cure or a vaccine. No one has a firm idea how long this crisis will last. No one leader, it seems, knows what to do.

Admitting not knowing what to do should not be seen as shameful. Rather, it should be seen as a first step to solving a problem.

We have gotten used to finding solutions quickly for most of our problems. In our fast-paced world, we like to get obstacles out of our way as fast as we can.

But not all problems can be solved outright. Sometimes, and it’s getting more often, we have to admit that we just don’t know what to do. We need to realize it may be better to engage other resources or talents to define our problems rightly before finding the right answers.

¹Stephen Budiansky, Blackett’s War, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) Kindle Edition, Chapter 6, Loc 2846

²Ibid, Kindle Edition, Chapter 7, Loc 2982 to 3047

A Letter to All Industrial Engineers: Time to Rise Up

Dear Industrial Engineer:

I come to you as a fellow Industrial Engineer (IE) with a message.

It’s time for us to rise up.

For years, or should I say decades, Industrial Engineering (IE) has been an un-recognized engineering discipline.

Many engineers—e.g. civil, mechanical, chemical, electrical—look at us as fakes.

Industrial Engineers (IEs) aren’t recognized as technically proficient builders or problem solvers at par with other engineering disciplines. Even if many of us have professional licenses issued from places like the United States and Europe, we are not respected in many parts of the world.

Most enterprises and organisations see us as more of management professionals than engineers. They perceive the specialized courses we take, such as time & motion studies, operations research (OR), facilities planning and inventory systems modelling, as management subjects than technical specializations. This is despite the fact that we are educated in advanced mathematics and sciences such as calculus, chemistry, and physics, and in engineering courses such as statics & dynamics, materials science, and electrical systems.

We are competent in reading and drafting engineering drawings and many of us know how to operate equipment like lathes, drills, presses, and milling machines. We specialize in advanced statistical models such as linear/non-linear programming, queuing theory, and transportation algorithms.

Despite our engineering prowess, very few understand what IEs do. We ourselves don’t have a clear picture of what Industrial Engineering is. We’re always finding ourselves struggling to explain what IE is to our peers, co-workers, friends, and fellow family members.

The problem is with the title itself. What does the “Industrial” in Industrial Engineer mean anyway?

People know what a civil, chemical, mechanical, or electrical engineer is just by the titles. But with Industrial Engineer, we have to explain it and most, if not we, still wouldn’t get it.

True, many of us IEs, thanks to our training and experience, have successful careers. Many of us have become top-notch executives and well-off entrepreneurs.

It would be nice, however, if we could just have a little more recognition and apply what we know as IEs. And this is exactly what this letter is all about.

We are in the midst of the worst crisis to hit the globe since World War II. The COVID-19 disease has ravaged communities and brought economies to a standstill. Enterprises and individuals have lost earnings and incomes as people get sick or are forced to stay home. Many products are in short supply as manufacturing and logistics facilities have become undermanned or short of materials. Border closings have delayed or stopped deliveries altogether.

COVID-19 is the latest and the worst in a series of adversities that has befallen supply chains. It isn’t the first and it will not be the last.

Year after year, adversities ranging from natural disasters, cyber-data malware, and trade tariffs have made life difficult for supply chains. From the September 11, 2001 terror attacks to the climate change crisis, adversities have been buffeting businesses and societies. They come small but frequently (as in daily traffic jams) or big and infrequently (such as typhoons). They can come in the form of interruptions (e.g. power failure) or as a man-made business trend (e.g. a new mobile app that makes obsolete traditional package deliveries).

As supply chains have become global and more sophisticated, they have become more and more sensitive to adversities. The challenge to supply chain productivity, and to enterprise survival, is very real.

We as IEs are in the best position to deal with adversities. We have the expertise, the talent, and the tools.

For example, amid the crisis of COVID-19, we as IEs can help hospitals reduce wait times for patients via our knowledge of Operations Research (OR). We can set up forecasting and inventory models to assist hospitals to avoid out-of-stock incidences for medical equipment and supplies. We can help in improving schedules and reducing wastage in medicines and supplies.

When it comes to supply chains, we have the capabilities to analyse and improve the flow processes of materials and merchandise. We are the experts in optimizing methods and in boosting the productivity of supply chain operations.

Before anything else, however, we need to upgrade our identity. We should stop calling ourselves Industrial Engineers. It’s too vague.

We should instead start calling ourselves Supply Chain Engineers. Just as with other engineering titles, we need to be recognized quickly for what we do by what we call ourselves.

Because supply chains are at the core of global business, it’s time we see ourselves as Supply Chain Engineers. We can build them, we can improve on them, and we can make them risk-averse and world class.

We have evolved and we should continue to do so. Industrial Engineer as a title belongs to a time when manufacturing was prominent. Today in the 21^st century, supply chains are prominent. Whether it be in products or services, there will be supply chains. And we have the means, the skills, and the talent that earns us the title as Supply Chain Engineers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the vulnerability of supply chains. It also has demonstrated the potential value of our vocation as Supply Chain Engineers.

We have the ability to change the world for the better. We are Supply Chain Engineers. We can make supply chains resistant to present and future adversities and deliver world-class productivity to the enterprise.

We have the power and we have the responsibility to demonstrate that power.

Let’s show them what we got.

About Overtimers Anonymous

The World Needs Supply Chain Engineers

Not leaders. Not managers. Not business executives. We have plenty of leaders, both real and wannabes. Managers and executives too; we have enough.

We need supply chain engineers.

The global supply chain is a present-day 21^st-century reality. We get much of our goods from all over the world. We buy shoes from Europe to sell in America. We ship rice to Australia and import minerals in return. We travel to trade and we negotiate with our tablets and mobile phones.

E-commerce has expanded the reach of supply chains. We order and pay via the Internet. More and more enterprises deliver door-to-door, business-to-business, person-to-person. Transportation’s new normal is multi-modal: airplane-to-van, van-to-vessel, vessel-to-truck, truck-to-motorcycle. Ordinary people ferry food and merchandise to homes as much as courier companies deliver packages to businesses.

There is so much room for improvement that supply chain management has become a high-profile career choice. But this is not a promotional message for supply chain management; this is a call for action. Supply chains are facing challenging adversities and supply chain management, as is, is no longer capable to deal with them.

Supply chain engineering is the “application of scientific and mathematical principles” for the design and synchronization of highly complex supply chain operations. It is a field the world needs to synchronize supply chain operations and networks.

It’s not only because supply chains have so much room for improvement. It’s also because adversities have become too significant to ignore. The adversities, which some may classify as supply chain risks, are real.

Adversities in recent years have caused plenty of pain to supply chains. They’ve disrupted transport, caused shortages of critical raw materials, and brought widespread inefficiencies. As much as they’ve been manageable, the adversities are not getting any fewer. In fact, they’re getting more disruptive and threatening. To an extent, they can shut down supply chains and cause not only economic failure but also society chaos. The most prominent example of this is the COVID19 virus pandemic.

Just as we need doctors to deal with disease, we need engineers to deal with supply chain disruption. Management as a profession and talent is no longer enough because management is only about planning, organising, directing, and controlling. We need engineering, that is, we need to have people with skills to design and install systems, networks, and methods to synchronize and integrate the various supply chain operations and make them adversity-resistant.

We need problem solvers that can define problems before they happen. Anticipating adversity and mitigating it, if not overcoming it, are the key tasks of the supply chain engineer.

Where can we find supply chain engineers?

They’re closer than you think.