In the January Issue of SCMR: “The big pivot”

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the January-February 2022 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

January-February 2022

Well, that’s over, and aren’t we all glad to put 2020 in the rear-view mirror? For a minute, however, let’s look at a silver lining, because I think there is one for supply chain managers. That’s because the pandemic put supply chain in the spotlight like never before—and, with the approval of a vaccine just a few weeks ago in December, supply chain and cold chain are back in the news… While sales usually gets all the attention, maybe 2021 is our time to shine.” That’s the beginning of the column I wrote for the January 2021 issue, and maybe I was a little too pollyannish.

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Well, that’s over, and aren’t we all glad to put 2020 in the rear-view mirror? For a minute, however, let’s look at a silver lining, because I think there is one for supply chain managers. That’s because the pandemic put supply chain in the spotlight like never before—and, with the approval of a vaccine just a few weeks ago in December, supply chain and cold chain are back in the news… While sales usually gets all the attention, maybe 2021 is our time to shine.”

That’s the beginning of the column I wrote for the January 2021 issue, and maybe I was a little too pollyannish. After all, supply chain has remained in the headlines for the past year, most of them beginning with the word shortage or a phrase like: “How the supply chain stole Christmas.” That said, we just came through a pretty smooth Christmas season. Supply chain managers jumped through hoops to mostly keep shelves stocked and to get orders delivered on time. This was not a repeat of the 2015 holiday season, when the supply chain really did steal Christmas.

I’m going to go out on a limb: Maybe 2022 is our time to shine. I’m already hearing from supply chain managers in industries as diverse as retail, appliance manufacturing, contract manufacturing and third party logistics that they’re pivoting from pandemic thinking to keeping up with growth. They’re looking forward and not backward. Call it “the big pivot.”

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