We all understand that customers and colleagues should be treated with respect â and we all know, too, that digital technologies can get in the way of that happening. Whatever the âjob to be done,â key communications tend to become less direct and more impersonal when the jobâs digitized. Thatâs just the nature of the beast: Apps and other technologies are doing a lot of the work that people used to do â and you canât train an app to have empathy. It doesnât help that engineers tend to optimize efficiency, rather than user experience, when they redesign work flows....
As governments and health care agencies work to stop the spread of Covid-19 and to treat those who are infected, manufacturers in more than a dozen industries are struggling to manage the epidemicâs growing impact on their supply chains. Unfortunately, many are facing a supply crisis that stems from weaknesses in their sourcing strategies that could have been corrected years ago....
As procurement teams struggle to cope with the Covid-19 global pandemic, most have been trying to keep up with the news about global response measures and have been working diligently to secure raw materials and components and protect supply lines. However, vital information is often not available or accessible across their global teams. As a result, their response to the disruption has been reactive and uncoordinated, and the impact of the crisis is hitting many of their companies full force....
Reports on how the Covid-19 outbreak is affecting supply chains and disrupting manufacturing operations around the world are increasing daily. But the worst is yet to come. We predict that the peak of the impact of Covid-19 on global supply chains will occur in mid-March, forcing thousands of companies to throttle down or temporarily shut assembly and manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Europe. The most vulnerable companies are those which rely heavily or solely on factories in China for parts and materials. The activity of Chinese manufacturing plants has fallen in the past month and is expected to remain depressed for months....
