When I joined Intel supply chain a decade ago, my colleagues were on the tail end of the impact of the Fukushima accident on the electronics and engineered products industry and our capital equipment install base and teams across the organization were recovering from weeks of back breaking risk management work. For a few months, Financial news channels called it a ‘disruption’ and it felt that they anticipated fairly rapidly a return to normal.
Fast forward 10 years, we have now what the NYTimes calls « The Great Supply Chain Disruption » and we get multiple articles, oped and other commentaries about how to solve these supply chain challenges. I get the impression that these same Markets hope that this situation will resolve itself with straightforward fixes and that again things will return to ‘normal’ at some point in time.
Perhaps I am alone in this but I feel ambivalent. As far as I can see, it is going to take a long, long while before things stabilise. It has been the most humbling experience for even the most thorough business continuity plans & seasoned operations executives.
Operations staff have been working extremely hard to find solutions to various issues driving delays and shortages of all kinds without the acknowledgment that their work is quite complex, require a certain depth of experience and long standing relationships.
Perhaps now, more than ever, #supplychain, #logistics, #operations and #manufacturing professionals should rise to the opportunity of really speaking up about what our work entail and take more space in the narrative.
It may be uncomfortable but it feels necessary so that #FinancialMarkets and the broader business community cease to underestimate #Operations in general and give it it’s appropriate place in driving value in the global economy.