Lessons The Pandemic Taught The Supply Chain
As a planner, you know you need to learn from the past. This is so you can improve future planning and supply chains. One of the most useful things to learn from is customer demand data from previous COVID-19 waves. Does your inventory planning system allow you to use this demand data to run what-if scenarios? If not, you may want to consider another system.
The COVID-19 demand data collected from the initial waves of the virus gives us an opportunity to learn about key drivers of demand for specific product categories in specific location. We can learn where forecasts went wrong and use this information to improve future planning for the next waves of COVID-19 (e.g. Delta Variant). Any learnings can be used in future waves of COVID-19.
The first thing to learn from this COVID-19 data is which categories of products were most adversely affected by the COVID-19 virus. The next step, learn why these product categories were adversely affected. This data can be used to further improve future pandemic scenarios as well as learn where there are gaps in your own supply chains that may need to be filled (i.e., if you find that you do not have enough of product 'X' to meet demand, you could source more of this product or streamline your process for obtaining it).
Changes can be applied to both your overall planning as well as individual locations. Data about the impacted products can be used in both types of analyses. For example, changes may lead a company to change their overall distribution of products. This could include changing the number of warehouses, transportation routes, etc. Changes may also be applied at a product group level within a plan. This would allow you to learn which products are not performing as expected and increase capacity or source these products from more reliable suppliers.
One of the most important lessons to learn is where the gaps in the supply chain are located. We may learn that there are certain products that are so adversely impacted by the COVID virus that they should be removed from inventory at all locations. Other learnings will encourage us to fill in supply chain gaps for particular product categories. For example, if we learn that a particular product category is so adversely impacted by COVID-19, the lesson should be applied to future plans for this product group. We should learn from what happened in this COVID round and apply it to our overall planning system.
Inventory management systems can provide us with information about demand data for a specific product group, location, or time period. This information is key for learnings and forecasting future demand with accuracy. We can learn from our own data as well as learnings about products that were adversely impacted by COVID-19. Changes from COVID-19 data are an important part of any company's pandemic planning process. It also gives you some insight into how pandemic simulations can help companies learn about their own operations in the event of a pandemic. It will also prioritize the most impactful opportunities within your supply chain.
Does your planning system allow you to learn from the COVID-19 data and apply it to your own planning? Are data points from COVID-19 important for your inventory management process? Have you already modified your supply chain or are you still in process? If not, it is time to learn about systems that can help you do this.
