Latest / Speaking of Supply Chain / Unveiling Global Disruptions: Miebach's Risk Management Findings
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- 0:07You're listening to Speaking of Supply Chain, a Mebach podcast. This is a
- 0:11show for logistics professionals looking to learn more about the latest innovations in supply chain.
- 0:17Each episode will feature a conversation on topics such as mitigating supply chain disruption
- 0:21and reducing risk, current automation trends, sustainability initiatives, and more. Let's
- 0:27dive right in. Hello, and welcome to Speaking of Supply Chain, where
- 0:32we explore trends, current events, and innovations impacting the logistics and supply chain
- 0:36industries. I'm your host, Ellen Wood. I am joined today by Danielle
- 0:41Simon and Tim Wagner from MEBAK, and we are going to be talking today
- 0:45about supply chain risk management and a study that has just been released on the
- 0:52topic. And welcome both of you. Daniel Tim, thank you very much
- 0:56firing us. Hello add in, thanks to be here to our topic today,
- 0:59which is apply chain risk management and very specifically this study that has just
- 1:04been released by Mebach. And this is a study that we've done previously,
- 1:10so this is something that we refresh every few years. Is that accurate?
- 1:12I think the last one was in twenty nineteen. Yes, this is completely
- 1:18true. So actually, supply chain risk management has has quite some history already
- 1:23within MEBACH, and not just within MEBACH, also within organizations. So we've
- 1:27always had disruptions like, for instance in two thousand and four, the tsunami
- 1:32in Southeast Asia, we had the financial crisis in two thousand and eight,
- 1:36the earthquake in Japan two thousand and eleven, So a long history of disruption.
- 1:40There's always something, there's always something, and especially you you brought the
- 1:46topic up already the last study in two nineteen. Compared to right now,
- 1:51especially within the last three years, a lot has changed. Actually. So
- 1:56we had, for instance, the COVID nineteen Pandama with global impacts in the
- 2:01form of lockdowns that were ordered by state authorities all around the world and caused
- 2:07operations and supply chains had to shut down more or less simultaneously than we had
- 2:14the ever given example. Or we have the political tensions that are currently between
- 2:20the Ukraine and Russia. So there's really a very long list of different disruptions
- 2:25that we saw, especially within the last three years. And what we also
- 2:31saw that for the first time, these disruptions seemed to bring more or less
- 2:37a shift. So before the topic supply chain risk management was dealt within more
- 2:42or less in theory, so we had a lot of publications and papers,
- 2:46etc. On that topic. But now for the first time we see that
- 2:50there's really a public attention on that, so everybody discusses that topic. And
- 2:57due to that, we see that there's really the shift towards more resiliency and
- 3:01establishing supply chain risk management in organizations. And this is also one of the
- 3:07main motivations behind the study to really investigate on that shift that is currently happening,
- 3:14and in these terms, also to investigate how has the risk environment now
- 3:19changed, in particular within the last three years, what are the challenges that
- 3:23that companies are facing, How well were they prepared for these risks that we
- 3:29just discussed, like for instance, COVID, And in this transition towards more
- 3:34resiliency, what are the measures that organizations are implementing or taking in the short,
- 3:39mid and long term. So I can imagine that that study from twenty
- 3:44nineteen. I haven't gone back to read it again. I remember reading it
- 3:46initially, but I haven't gone back to read it. But it would be
- 3:49interesting to go back and read that and think, well, you know,
- 3:52how does how does this look compared to the lens that we have now?
- 3:55Were we even remotely considering some of the scopes of the disruptions that have happened
- 4:01since then. So you you mentioned COVID. Obviously I feel like we're just
- 4:05beating a dead horse and talking about COVID. Everything is COVID, It's all
- 4:10related to COVID. But it really was such a huge global disruption for everyone.
- 4:15There's no one that that disruption did not touch in some way, shape
- 4:19or form. And some of these other disruptions, the ever given, with
- 4:25the tsunami, with the political unrest in in Ukraine. You know, all
- 4:30of these things are affecting very far reaching and people are paying attention to it
- 4:36now. As you said, they they have a vested interest in understanding the
- 4:43repercussions of some of those, even just regional events affecting the supply chains and
- 4:48on a global capacity. So what has changed since that report in twenty nineteen,
- 4:55because I'm sure you've read it, you've looked at it. What's different?
- 4:58Definitely? So maybe one one short disclaimer. So the topic supply chain
- 5:01risk management was also in twenty nineteen of great interest, So I think one
- 5:08of the last questions. One of one of the last points that we're mentioned
- 5:13there is that most of respondents said, yes, supply chain risk management will
- 5:16be more relevant in the future. And this is now, this was obviously
- 5:21they were right, actually and they were definitely right. And what we see
- 5:30now and this disc goes perfectly along with the results from the previous study.
- 5:34One of our first questions was do you feel that the risk for your supply
- 5:40chains has increased? And over nineteen percent of the respondent said yes, the
- 5:45risk has increased. So now with the results of the study in our hand,
- 5:50we can also quantify that that impression that most of our respondents yet,
- 5:57that that that they share. So we see compared to two thousand nineteen,
- 6:01that the number of disruptions had increased by forty percent. Compared to the year
- 6:06two thousand nineteen, the response had forty percent more disruptions. So on average,
- 6:13they had ten disruptions per year and two thousand nineteen and now they have
- 6:15fourteen fourteen disruptions per company per year, which is already a very high number.
- 6:24That's really significant. But apart from that, the second perspective that we've
- 6:28analyzed within our study is that these disruptions also have more severe impacts. So
- 6:34what we did is that we didn't just ask for the pure number of disruptions.
- 6:39We also gave them the chance to to rate these disruptions in different categories.
- 6:44So we had, for instance, the category a very low risk to
- 6:47low, medium, severe or even existensionally threatening. And what we saw especially
- 6:55in these upper two categories, for instance, these severe risks, there's really
- 7:00a huge increase of these risks. So in twenty nineteen we had fifteen percent
- 7:04of all risks within that category, and right now this increase to twenty two
- 7:10percent. So to to translate this, more than every fifth disruption that ocus
- 7:16as a sea impact on the organization. And this is uh, this is
- 7:21really tremendous and really really ash. So not only are there more disruptions,
- 7:29they're bigger exactly, Yes, So you're going to have more disruptions. One
- 7:33of them is going to be huge. What kinds of things are um,
- 7:39so you said that the results and the implications from these these impacts or these
- 7:45disruptions are getting larger as well, What what kind of impacts our companies looking
- 7:49out for? What are they what are they afraid of happening? What's what's
- 7:54their fear that's going to happen? Is it a financial is it um?
- 7:59You know? Are they are they looking at disruptions in terms of just not
- 8:03being able to get product where it needs to be, or are they looking
- 8:05at, you know, losing business. I know one thing that is um
- 8:09you know, it's it's very known right now in in the US, and
- 8:13that is with you know, Budweiser beer. And there's a huge disruption in
- 8:18you know, some customer perception and that's a that's a huge, huge disruption
- 8:24for their production that they're not they're not selling as much. So are some
- 8:28of these disruptions in terms of losing market share or is it just you know,
- 8:33not being able to serve customers in the way and fashion that they intended
- 8:37to. So I think both both is right. Actually, So if I
- 8:43translate this to to our how we classified it internally, we have these direct
- 8:50losses and these indirect losses. Direct losses would be, for instance, I
- 8:54can't deliver to my customers anymore, and for that I have for example loss
- 9:00sales which I can quantify perfectly. Or I have if an earthquake hits my
- 9:05production facility and this facility breaks down, then I have also a financial damage.
- 9:11So this is what I can quantify. What you were also referring to
- 9:15that Buttweiser example where I'm afraid of losing market shairs if I can't supply my
- 9:20customers. This is quite hard to quantify. So this is why we call
- 9:24it indirect indirect losses. But of course at the end both is connected together,
- 9:31and companies are afraid of both. Actually exactly, a loss is a
- 9:35loss, regardless of how it happened. But the how is is where we
- 9:39get into trying to mitigate those risks, and that is where this study is
- 9:45really trying to drill down. And so how well were companies prepared for some
- 9:50of the risks we talked about the study in twenty nineteen. They knew there
- 9:54were risks coming, they knew there were potentially big risks. We've identified the
- 9:58fact that there are more and they're bigger now now. But what did they
- 10:01do or what have they done in terms of trying to prepare for those risks
- 10:05and be ready for them knowing that they're coming. Yeah, you say,
- 10:09you say knowing that they're coming. But in case of these last three years
- 10:16especially, we probably have to say none of us were prepared for what was
- 10:20coming. These risks that we faced were some of the probably most unprecedented that
- 10:28we have seen in the last decades. And usually when you draw a risk
- 10:33matrix where you have those that have low impact and low probability and you have
- 10:39those that have high probability and high impact. These were the ones that have
- 10:46low probability with high impact, so the ones that you don't expect, at
- 10:50least at this scale. So nevertheless, we found out that at least ninety
- 10:58four percent of the company needs that took part in this study latest now have
- 11:05in supply chain risk management process set up, so hopefully a lot of them
- 11:09were going in prepared so that not this was a follow up of the last
- 11:16three years building up this supply chain risk management, but it was already set
- 11:20up before that. And what we also see is that the importance of the
- 11:26whole topic has been recognized and is one of the top priorities in most companies.
- 11:33So it goes up to sea level now that they are involved in this
- 11:39process, which is very important to make quick and decisive decisions once such risks
- 11:46break out, because that's I think in the end a question of how quickly
- 11:54can you decide on what to do that can save you in the end,
- 12:00like we thought, like we talked about a lot of money and can mitigate
- 12:03the impact. So we hope that a lot of people and a lot of
- 12:07companies were going in prepared. But at least now we see that this shift
- 12:13that Tim was talking about, and it's really set up in the companies by
- 12:20being prepared at least for what's next looking bit from now on. Well,
- 12:26and you mentioned that the c suite is more involved. Are they more in
- 12:31tune or or up to speed in terms of some of these these risk mitigation
- 12:35strategies then they were previously. So I know a lot of times, you
- 12:41know, you have the person in operations who has this concern. You know,
- 12:45obviously they have a vested interest in making sure that things continue to run
- 12:48and getting that that audience with the C suite and really having a strategy on
- 12:54how to navigate these changes in the supply chain. I know, for years
- 13:00it felt like they just weren't able to get the face time, they weren't
- 13:03able to be taken seriously. And I feel like now the C suite is
- 13:07a little bit more involved in the supply chain overall, it's not just you
- 13:11know, the operational factors, it's a business function. Did you see that
- 13:16in the report as well? Yes, exactly. So I think supply chain
- 13:20and the words supply chain and what it means. I guess after those last
- 13:28three years, now everyone knows what that means and what it is, and
- 13:33it's not a niche. It's now the backbone of a company. It was
- 13:37always, but it's also now perceived as that. And so I think and
- 13:43also what we see is that the C level has to there is no chain,
- 13:48no chance to not give attention to that topic because it's a competitive advantage
- 13:56to be prepared for supply chain disruptions that will help you for the next coming
- 14:03years. Because we're still looking although the last three years we're already quite crazy,
- 14:09we might be looking into a future which might stay a bit like this.
- 14:15I hope not, but I understand the sentiment that, yes, we
- 14:18need to be prepared. We've already dealt with really really catastrophically bad. Hopefully
- 14:22we never have to face that again, but we're prepared, or we at
- 14:26least have some scope of reference for what we might need to be prepared for.
- 14:31I guess you know, yay, everyone knows about supply chain. Now
- 14:35we are no longer niche, we are front and center. We finally get
- 14:39the recognition we deserve. Go us exactly. So, how effective was the
- 14:46risk management that they had put into place or that's being put into place now,
- 14:50I mean, are they We've got more risks coming, We've got higher
- 14:54risks, c suites involved, We've got strategies to mitigate. Are these strategies
- 14:58working. Yes they are, although also here we always have to keep in
- 15:05mind or in perspective that these outbreaks that we had over the last couple of
- 15:11years, they were not very likely. So a suppliging risk management is always
- 15:18good. And we found out in the study that if it's a well functioning
- 15:24and well prepared process, that over fifty percent of the respondence that we had
- 15:31in the study could mitigate the impacts of the top risks that occurred in the
- 15:35last couple of years. So basically every second company was able to mitigate the
- 15:43impact. Although you sometimes also have to like wave the white flag and say,
- 15:48okay, this is a risk where even a suppliging risk process, no
- 15:52matter how good it is, cannot help you, as with COVID, because
- 15:58it's such a globe perspective, guilbal singum where everyone is involved. That also,
- 16:06the best processes can't really help you, right when when everyone is not
- 16:11to their knees, then it's it's not a matter of keeping a competitive advantage
- 16:15in business, it's just survival and everyone's trying to survive. So so what
- 16:22are some things going forward? So you've you've measured everything pre COVID to now
- 16:30we've looked at some of the those those risk mitigations. And even when we
- 16:34say mitigation, that does not mean nothing happened. That does not mean nothing
- 16:37went wrong where there wasn't any loss. That was just keeping the loss to
- 16:41the absolute minimum. So what are some things that that companies are doing to
- 16:48plan for that those next unexpected risks, those next crazy things that could happen
- 16:55on the on the horizon that we don't know about yet but we know we
- 16:59need to be prepared for. Yeah. So actually there are different measures or
- 17:03different possible ways to cluster these measures. So in the short term, at
- 17:07least, what we saw within these crisis situations within the last three years,
- 17:12we saw that companies tend to build up redundancies, for example, in the
- 17:17form of increased inventories or in the procurement section in the form of dual or
- 17:22multi sourcing which they established. So we see really that there are there's really
- 17:27a focus then once the companies are already in such a crisis situation, on
- 17:33measures that are easy and fast to implement. So these things of course also
- 17:38come with additional costs, so we have for example, more inventory holding costs
- 17:44or a higher organizational effort. But what is quite interesting to see is that
- 17:49especially within the last three years, there was this twist also in the trends
- 17:55back from even more leaner supply chains towards more resilience apply chains. So this
- 18:00is then at least what we see in the short term. For the mid
- 18:04and long term, there we really start to see structural changes in the supply
- 18:10chains. So for example, regarding geo geographical risks, we see a relocation
- 18:17or near shoring, that is that is planned for companies. Then of course
- 18:22what we also see is that companies start to implement additional notes in order to
- 18:30diversify their supply chain and make them more resilient against these risks or additional notes
- 18:36for critical for critical ones, we have that diversification and this is also by
- 18:42the way. One project that I'm currently working on where we have an electronics
- 18:48OEM that is producing currently in China and that wants to get a little bit
- 18:55more independent from China and is thereby now searching for an additional product tan side
- 19:00in the APEC region, and now we are heavily discussing to set up a
- 19:06location, for example, in Thailand and Malaysia. So all these countries that
- 19:11offer a quite political a stable political environment, but on the other hand side
- 19:18also comparably low wages or low infrastructure costs, they are getting the new champions,
- 19:26or to say so, they are getting the countries that companies are looking
- 19:32for in order to yet diversicate their supply chains even more and decent. These
- 19:37are really trends that that we often see and often get approached by the clients
- 19:42or within conversation. Yes, we talk very frequently about so resiliency and redundancy
- 19:48in supply chain being much more, much more on topic and much more considered
- 19:56than it had been in the past because it was all about leans fly chain
- 20:00prior to to COVID and twenty twenty. So now that we know that that
- 20:06is not a sustainable model, we know we need a little bit more resiliency,
- 20:11a little bit more redundancy. But then, you know, it's interesting
- 20:14that you you mentioned that companies are looking to near shoring, but um not
- 20:19only near shoring, but just even looking at other geographies or other areas where
- 20:26they could capitalize and bring bring business to new geographies and build and have additional
- 20:33facilities and as you said, more nodes in other areas where they maybe not
- 20:38had considered previously just because they didn't feel they needed to. So that's that's
- 20:44great that we're you know, bringing some additional business into some new areas.
- 20:49So what other things are going on aside from resiliency and redundancy. What is
- 20:53going to make the difference for companies that want to come out of this and
- 21:00be extremely successful, So to use their supply chain as a competitive advantage and
- 21:06using the risk management as the way to get there. Yes, so one
- 21:11key factor for success is actually the use of tools, so to support their
- 21:17already implemented supply chain risk management processes with tools, software or even AI.
- 21:23So as we discuss that risks are getting more diverse, more global, and
- 21:29tend to occur more often, our sublige or the organization supply chain risk management
- 21:34processes are getting more and more under stress and more and more relevant. But
- 21:38what we see in the current status quo is that most processes are connected with
- 21:45a huge amount of manual work, which is on the one hand side,
- 21:49very time and resource consuming, but on the other hand side also gives a
- 21:56lot of room for errors that could be made. So in all to prevent
- 22:00that and in order to leverage all the advantages that the supply chain risk management
- 22:04can have, it is important to yet to increase the use of proper tools
- 22:11that are already in place in the market and that can be used already.
- 22:15And this is quite interesting as supply chain management is or supply chain managers in
- 22:21general, are having to deal with a lot of data and they are using
- 22:26tools very frequently. But what was interesting is that, especially when it comes
- 22:30to supply chain risk management, they are not doing even though we see that
- 22:36that tools can help to collect and analyze the data, can help to assess
- 22:42supply chain weaknesses or prioritize risks. So this is really a huge section where
- 22:48companies need to catch up. But the ones that do, they can profit
- 22:52profit profit on that and they can leverage their competitive advantages through that you know
- 23:00that that doesn't surprise me that there are companies with mountains of data that they're
- 23:04not capitalizing on that is just sitting there in a computer, in a database
- 23:08on a server somewhere, and it could be useful information. But who are
- 23:14just so busy trying to keep up with everything that's going on today that you
- 23:18getting into those analytics and using it as prescriptive to help us understand what could
- 23:25happen and how to get around it. That that's just something waiting for a
- 23:30rainy day to get to and it's raining outside, so maybe they ought to
- 23:34get to it. I would like to add to other key points, one
- 23:42more being on strategic decision making, which needs to reflect risks in the future,
- 23:49especially or for example, when it comes to location assessments. So the
- 23:53example that Tim already mentioned when talking about the decision to open up a new
- 24:00production or a new warehouse in a different location, those are long term decisions.
- 24:07They need to be prepared and they need to be good decisions. So
- 24:11this example of near shoring is exactly that, and therefore these decisions should not
- 24:17only take into account the possibility of cost reduction, which it maybe did in
- 24:22the past. Will also include other factors like risk or also sustainability is a
- 24:27huge topic. And if we look at that example again for lowering the dependency
- 24:34from China, which a lot of companies are also trying to do all over
- 24:38the world by creating redundancies in neighbor countries or also like new showing relocating back
- 24:45closer to their whole market, for example, the fashion industry does that quite
- 24:52often. Now coming back to Europe, actually, so a big part of
- 24:56this decision should be to look at the risk probability of the new location,
- 25:02because it doesn't make sense to walk away from a risk into a new one.
- 25:08So it's basically what would you really have to take into account in these
- 25:14decisions is the different risk categories. Just to make two examples, the natural
- 25:19disasters that can happen basically everywhere all over the globe, like we had this
- 25:25big catastrophic earthquake in Turkey, which is actually a market in Europe where the
- 25:32labor is still quite cheap, but it's also close to major European markets.
- 25:37Or also in the US, I guess you know the risk of hurricanes which
- 25:41can happen in certain US states and sadly also happened regularly on a regular makers,
- 25:49and also the whole geo political risks. It's not only China Taiwan,
- 25:55it's also China and Hong Kong in the last couple of years, and it's
- 25:59also the war in Ukraine which affects not only Ukraine but also countries in the
- 26:04neighboring regions. So on a strategic level, implementing the risk topic is very
- 26:11important, but it actually doesn't stop there. You can also bring it to
- 26:17a tactical on operational level, where for example, risk monitoring can be beneficial
- 26:22or sometimes even crucial for survival. There have been a lot of papers in
- 26:29webinarstry during the last year from different companies that focused on demand planning and forecasting
- 26:36as a huge huge topic at the moment, also driven by COVID, where
- 26:41the demand was fluctuating by hundreds of percent probably and every time there is a
- 26:48risk outbreak, this demand can fluctuate and it gets more and more complex to
- 26:53forecast it correctly and being able to quickly adapt to such risk outbreaks by simply
- 27:02knowing them and being prepared and knowing what to do in case of that will
- 27:07be crucial in the future and that can be also done, for example,
- 27:11for transportation, if we talk about transport routing in case of any severe whether
- 27:18events or any local risk outbreaks. For example a few years back we had
- 27:23a big flood in Western Germany. To really adapt your strategy on this tactical
- 27:33and operational level as quickly as possible to then, for example, just still
- 27:38deliver your products in time. So all of this is very very important and
- 27:47as Tim mentioned, needs to be supported by software or AI AI because a
- 27:53manual or we as a person cannot be as good as a software in this
- 28:00case. And AI will create a competitive advantage in the future. And whichever
- 28:06company can use that to their advantage this technology and innovation on the market and
- 28:12implement this and connect this to supply chain risks, they will have this competitive
- 28:18advantage for the future and they will be the one that either survive the next
- 28:26big outbreak or yeah, create additional market shares and really be the new leaders
- 28:37in the future. You're absolutely right, And it's it's not even as much
- 28:40that humans can't go through that that amount of data. It's that it would
- 28:44take us too long and by them, the risk is over. I mean,
- 28:47the emergency has already happened. So we need those tools to be able
- 28:51to go through those mountains of data that are that are being collected with every
- 28:55transaction, with every movement of you know, a piece of inventory, and
- 28:59be able to you know, provide some of those insights, some of those
- 29:03potentials to avoid disaster ahead of the disaster. If it would if it were
- 29:08left up to you know, humans having to analyze that data, we could
- 29:11do it. It'll take a while. So I absolutely agree one hundred percent
- 29:18that that companies need to be utilizing some of those tools and technologies that are
- 29:22available in order to get ahead of the curve and stay ahead of the curve.
- 29:29Well, where can people access the full report, the full supply Chain
- 29:33Risk Management report. We will be putting that obviously onto the MEVA website and
- 29:38then together the report with this podcast, you get all the informations necessary and
- 29:45if there are still open questions or topics, and also if someone wants to
- 29:51go into discussion, then we are obviously happy to do so. All right,
- 29:56I will make sure that we have your your LinkedIn profiles in the podcast
- 30:00description, so if anyone has any questions, your phone will be ringing off
- 30:03the hook. I'm certain all right. That brings us to the end of
- 30:07this episode. Thank you so much Daniel and Tim for joining me today to
- 30:11discuss the supply chain risk management and the report specifically. I hope our listeners
- 30:17enjoyed the discussion as much as I did. If any of our listeners out
- 30:21there have a suggestion for a topic or a guest that they'd like to hear
- 30:25on the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Please contact me at
- 30:29podcast at mebak dot com and let me know what you think, let me
- 30:32know who you'd like to hear from, and let me know what you want
- 30:34to hear about. As always, thanks for listening to Speaking of Supply Chain.
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