Talking Supply Chain: Lexmark’s missing piece

When people think of Lexmark, it’s likely an image printer sitting on your desk comes to mind. For decades, the Lexington, Kentucky-based company was known for its printers. In 2024, you can still purchase a Lexmark printer, but the company has transitioned and is now a provider of cloud-enabled imaging and internet of things technologies.

But, as any technology company has learned in the years since COVID, electronic component shortages can happen at any time.

“Those were difficult and tough times and I would say this project that we termed Shortstop was really about survival within the supply chain post-pandemic,” Billy Spears, chief product delivery officer for Lexmark, told me for an upcoming episode of the Talking Supply Chain podcast. “We were in an environment where, across the industry, demand was recovering; demand was coming back faster than what suppliers could react to … so we got into a situation where we saw lead times extending to over two years [and] even some longer in some cases. …  The difficult thing was we couldn’t predict it. We could only react to it when it happened and it was too late. There were too many shortages occurring at any given time and we couldn’t operate in that environment.”

Lexmark was missing that key supply chain piece it needed: visibility. Lexmark needed a way identify supply chain shortages that could jeopardize its operation. It needed a shortstop. So it built one.

“We would call it a kind of strategic supply chain initiative around how do we get better visibility into the supply base, or into the supply chain, to where we can be more proactive in not having to respond to these issues so we can fix things before they become a problem,” Spears said. “So, that was what Shortstop was intended to do; to get that visibility to be able to react and make changes and adjust in real-time.”

Listen to more of Spears’ conversation with Talking Supply Chain host Brian Straight in this episode.

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