Category Archives: Supply Chain

Even Forbes is Falling for the the Gen-AI Garbage!

This recent article in Forbes on the Supply Chain Shift to Intelligent Technology is what inspired last week’s and this week’s rant because, while supply chains should be shifting to intelligent technology, the situations in which that is Gen-AI are still extremely rare (to the point that a blue moon is much more common). But what really got the doctor‘s goat is the ridiculous claims as to what Gen-AI can do. Claims with are simultaneously maddening and saddening because, if they just left out Gen-AI, then everything they claimed is not only doable, but doable with fantastic results.

Of the first three claims, Gen-AI can only be used to solve one — and only partially.

Procurement and Regulatory Compliance: This is one example where a Closed Private Gen-AI LLM is half the battle — it can process, summarize, and highlight key areas of hundred page texts faster and better than prior NLP tech. But it can’t tell you if your current contracts, processes, efforts, or plans will meet the requirements. Not even close. In fact, no AI can — the best AI can just indicate the presence or absence of data, processes, or tech that are most likely to be relevant and then an intelligent human needs to make the decision, possibly only after obtaining appropriate expert Legal advice.
Manufacturing Efficiency: streamline production workflows? optimize processes? reduce errors? No, Hell No, and even the Joker wouldn’t make that joke! You want streamlining? You first have to do a deep process cycle time analysis, compare it to whatever benchmarks you can get, identify the inefficiencies, identify potential processes and tech for improvement, and implement them. Optimize processes? Detailed step by step analysis, identification of opportunities, expert process redesign, training, implementation, and monitoring. Reduce errors? No! People and tech do the processes, not Gen-AI — implement better monitoring, rules, and safeguards.
Virtual Supply Collaboration: A super-charged chatbot on steroids is NOT a virtual assistant. Now, properly sandwiched between classical AI and rules-based intelligence it can deal with 80% of routine inquiries, but not on its own, and it’s arguable if it’s even worth it when a well designed app can get the user to the info they need 10 times faster with just a couple of clicks. Supply chain communicating? People HATE getting a “robot” on a support line as much as you do, to the point some of us start screaming profanities at it if we don’t get a real operator within 10 seconds. Based on this, do you really think your supplier wants to talk to a dumb bot that has NO authority to make a decision (or, at least, should NEVER have the authority — though the doctor is sure someone’s going to be dumb enough to give the bot the authority … let’s just hope they can live with the inevitable consequences)?

And maybe if the article had stopped there the doctor would let it pass, but
first of all, it went on to state the following for “AI”, without clarifying that Gen-AI doesn’t fit in the process, leading us to conclude that, since the first part of the article is about Gen-AI, this part is too, and thus is totally wrong when it claims that:

“AI” understands dirty data: with about 70% accuracy where it counts IF you’re lucky; that’s about how accurate it is at identifying a supplier from your ERP/AP transaction records; an admin assistant will get about 98% accuracy by comparison
it can “confirm” inventories: all it can do is regurgitate what’s in the inventory system — that’s not confirmation!
it can identify duplicate materials: first it has to identify two records that are actually duplicates;
and how likely do you think this is with a supplier mapping accuracy of 70%?
it can identify materials to be shared among facilities: well, okay, it can identify materials that are used across facilities and could be located in a central location — but how useful is that? it’s not because, first of all, YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS, and, second, IT CAN’T DO SUPPLY CHAIN OPTIMIZATION — THAT’S WHAT A SUPPLY CHAIN OPTIMIZATION SOLUTION IS FOR! OPTIMIZATION!!! We’ll break it down syllabically for you so you know what to ask for. OP – TUH – MY – ZAY – SHUN!
it can recommend ideal storage locations: again, NO! This requires solving a very sophisticated optimization model it doesn’t have the data for, doesn’t know how to build, and definitely doesn’t know how to solve.
it can revamp outdated stocking policies: well, only the solution of a proper Inventory OPTIMIZATION Model that identifies the appropriate locations and safety stock levels can identify how these should be revamped
it can recommend order patterns by consumption and lead time: that’s classical curve fitting and tend projection

And, secondly, as the doctor just explained, most of what they were saying AI could do CAN’T be done with AI, and instead can only be done with analytics, optimization, and advanced mathematical models! (You know, the advanced tech (that works) that you’ve been ignoring for over two decades!)

The Gen-AI garbage is getting out of control. It’s time to stop putting up with it and start pushing back against any provider who’s trying to sell you this miracle cure silicon snake oil and show them the door. There are real solutions that work, and have worked, for two decades that will revolutionize your supply chain. You don’t need false promises and tech that isn’t ready for prime time.

Somedays the doctor just wishes he was the Scarecrow. Only someone without a brain can deal with this constant level of Gen-AI bullsh!t and not be stressed about the deluge of misinformation being spread on a daily basis! But then again, without a brain, he might be fooled by the slick salespeople that Gen-AI could give him one, instead of remembering the wise words of the True Scarecrow.

Interrupt that Risk Event with Interos and Sustain Stable Supply Chains

Supply Chain risks are on the rise, as are disruptive events, and an event anywhere in your supply chain, even four levels down, can bring your operations to a halt if you can’t detect it, respond quickly, and take active mitigations. To this end, as chronicled in Part X of our Source-to-Pay+ Series that discussed Supply Chain Risk, a number of vendors have cropped up in the last few years around Supply Chain risks, but not all players are equal.

One of the first of the new breed of integrated supplier and supply chain risk players, and one of the most differentiated, is Interos. Interos was founded in 2005 by Jennifer Bisceglie as a consultancy focussed on helping organizations map out, understand, and get a handle on supply chain risk. Jennifer realized near the end of last decade that, with supply chains becoming so long, so complex, and so interconnected across the digital, financial, and physical realms, that technology would be needed to support organizations in this effort.

The core team knew that in order to do this, they’d need a completely new type of technology, so they sought out a new team to build one of the first outside-in business relationship graphs using trade data, third-party data sources and artifacts (such as ownership data, executive data, etc.), and even press releases. Then, on top of this relationship data, they’d need to layer risk data to help an organization identify risks in the supply chain. This would involve capturing risk events as well in order to help them understand which clients may need to be notified and/or use the Interos platform to gauge the extent that a risk event may impact them. So that’s what they built — at a global scale.

Interos has built a business relationship (knowledge) graph that connects 11 Billion relationships across 410 Million companies. These companies are then risk scored against 230+ attributes across six (6) different categories of risk: Finance, Geo-political, Restrictions/Sanctions, ESG, Cyber, and Catastrophic, depending on the extent of information available. At a minimum, they track country/industry level risks and will use that when there is insufficient data to assess the specific company risk against a specific attribute. Based on the assessment of each risk, Interos will compute an overall i-Score^TM from 1 to 999, with lower scores being higher risk. It will then scan your entire network, from sink to source, and identify all high risk suppliers for you.

The Interos Resilience platform, which processes tens of thousands of sources and over 3 Terrabytes of raw data daily, constantly monitors for new relationships, information, and (related) events that could pose a change in an entity’s risk status, as well as indicate the presence of a (potentially) catastrophic event, including a natural disaster or a cyber-attack. For each of the six risk domains, the platform scans for a number of factors, sub-factors, and individual attributes. We’ll cover the primary factors in this post, and if you have a particular area of interest, you can always drill in during a demo or discussion with Interos.

With respect to Finance, the platform looks for the following:

Liquidity: Cash, Working Capital
Solvency: Assets, Capital Efficiency, Credit Rating, Debt Coverage, & Leverage
Profitability, Debt Coverage, & Valuation

With respect to Geo-Politcal risk, the platform looks at the following:

Political Instability
State Capacity
Political Process
Economic Rights
Socio-Economic Development

With respect to Restrictions/Sanctions, the platform looks at the following:

Sanctions (USA, UK, EU, etc.)
Associated Sanctioned Individuals
Import/Export Embargos
Associated Regulations

With respect to ESG, the platform looks at the following:

Environmental Performance
Social Commitment
Governance Strategy

With respect to Cyber, the platform looks at the following:

System Attacks (compromised accounts, cyber-attacks, data spills, etc.)
System Vulnerabilities
Supply Chain Cyber Events
Cyber Compliance
Cyber Threat Activity

With respect to Catastrophic risk, the platform looks at the following:

Localized Natural Hazard and Disaster Risk
Communication Capacity
Healthcare Capacity
Infrastructure Capacity
Burden of Disease Risk

Based on all of this, the platform is very useful for companies that need to perform

Supplier due diligence
Continuous related party monitoring
Real-time catastrophic event detection

Interos is one of the most complete supply chain risk intelligence platforms for supplier due diligence. The ability to quickly screen a supplier on six highly relevant domains can give an organization confidence that the organization understands the risk profile of a supplier before onboarding it, which is not something you can get from a traditional credit score or an empty search on sanction lists.

Interos is one of the few platforms that can be counted on for continuous related party monitoring as it processes over 3 TB (Terrabytes) of data a day, constantly updates risk scores and related events for affected entities in the system, and can propagate updates through the business relationship graph in real time.

Interos is also one of the few platforms that can be used to do real-time catastrophic event detection where the event is not limited to a single event type, as the platform monitors for natural disasters, man-made disasters, bankruptcies, and cyber incidents — some of which Interos can detect before anything is reported due to a change in organizational behaviour — and it can immediately propagate news of events or risks to one of the 410M+ business entities it tracks to all impacted clients who can use their relationship explorer to identify all the links it has to the company.

For example, if there’s a fire in a raw material or component factory (which seems to happen in one of the few major RAM suppliers every decade — just do a few historical Google Searches if you don’t believe me) two (or three) tiers down the chain under your tier 1 supplier, you can immediately map out all of your tier 1 suppliers that trace down to that factory and make sure they have enough stock on hand to continue producing your products until you expect that factory to come back online (by either instructing them to immediately secure additional stock on your behalf or doing so for them) well before your competition realizes there’s going to be a disruption a week down the road when the plant is announced shut down and it finally trickles down to local news half a world away.

The platform monitors and tracks natural disasters globally down to a gird of 10 km squares, as well as potential paths of storms, waves, and fires, and can thus immediately identify each business entity that is likely to have been impacted as well as each business entity that is likely to be impacted if a natural disaster (such as a storm) continues its course. Thus, if a tsunami hits the coast of Japan, it can allow an organization’s incident response teams to immediately identify just those organizations in Japan in the area the wave hit and allow it to focus its efforts on just those suppliers, vs. having to reach out to and assess every supplier in Japan, of which it may have hundreds if it is in electronics when only ten were in the immediate area. The time savings alone is incalculable. (And, of course, if an earthquake hit a province in China, it would take an army of consultants months to figure out precisely what suppliers were close enough to the fault line to likely have suffered [significant] damage vs those far enough away to only feel minor shaking whereas the Interos platform will calculate all of this in just a few minutes.)

However, one of the most unique risk monitoring capabilities lies in its proprietary digital behavioural modelling that can often detect when an organization has experienced a potential cyber-attack, breach, or data theft and alert customers to that potential cyber-incursion days, or weeks, before the organization announces a breach and/or it makes the news. Using the business relationship graph, this immediately allows an organization to determine every first-tier supplier that relies on that organization. The organization then has to determine if any of those suppliers has access to the organization’s financial account information, personnel data, or confidential intellectual property. Those tier 1 suppliers that do need to be immediately approached and asked if any of that data was shared with, or accessible by, the sub-tier supplier that was breached, or affected by. If so, the organization can immediately start taking mitigation actions before they themselves are the target of a cyber attack.

The platform is very easy to use. When a user logs in, they see a summary of their full supply base and multiple sub-tier relationships (which for a multi-national with tens of thousands [10k+] of tier 1 suppliers can be hundreds of thousands of tier-3 suppliers). The user can see the number of suppliers by tier who are high risk, medium risk, low risk, and, possibly, unknown (as it’s a brand new supplier where there is little to no information on that supplier). Note that the number of “unknown” suppliers will typically be really small, and for most truly global companies with 500K global suppliers in their extended supply chain, the unknown will be significantly less than 5K (usually 0.5% or less).

(Note: If more than 1% of your extended supply chain falls into high risk, you have some serious problems. In a good supply chain, the vast majority of suppliers should be low risk (> 95%) with a small percentage medium risk, preferably no high risk, and preferably no unknown.)

You also see a breakdown of risk by

each of the six (6) risk domains, which lets you see if there is a particular risk concentration,
average risk by groups of interest (which could be country, product line based, strategic suppliers, etc.),
a summary of natural hazards and disasters currently being tracked, both visually and textually (which shows the number of potential tier 1, 2, 3+ suppliers that are potentially impacted)
a visual summary of the most relevant current events being reported on (with links to full articles in third party sources), and
a quick link to the relationship explorer tool that will let you find all of your connections to an entity of interest

When you select a category of high-risk suppliers (overall or by category), it will bring up a list of companies with their individual i-Scores that you can select to to bring up their complete risk scorecard (if you have unlocked their scorecard; depending on your subscription level, you have so many credits that allows you to unlock that many scorecards; you can buy more if you need, but most since most companies don’t need to evaluate more than a small percentage of tier 2+ suppliers, their packages are usually sufficient). The scorecard summary will summarize the score in each of the six areas, and will allow you to drill down into the factors, sub-factors, and individual attributes that are known and scored (and contribute to the overall score), which include those discussed above.

The scorecard will also summarize company corporate data (industry registrations and codes, locations, etc.), its tier 2 and tier 3 relationships and risks, which can be filtered to all known relationships (in your extended supply chain), as well as all events (and related sources) that have been detected that are relevant to that supplier entity. If a risk score is low (or suddenly drops), you will have access to all of the data that contributed to that score to make your own judgement (and jump-start your investigation).

The platform also has a geographic view of natural disasters that is interactive and allows a user to drill into a region, filter on natural disaster type (earthquake, tropical storm, volcanic eruption, etc.), and even project a few days in the future (if the disaster is a tropical storm, cyclone, tsunami, etc. and there is forecast data available from Interos‘ 3^rd party, or public, sources). In addition, it can be used to look at historical natural disaster and weather event data, which goes back between 50 and 200 years, depending on how much historical data is available for the region, as well as the risk of each natural disaster type (wildfire, drought, earthquake, flood, etc.) in the region base on all of this historical data.

And the relationship explorer is likely the most useful part of the platform because, if a risk event is detected, such as a natural disaster or a cyber breach, you can instantly trace all of your active relationships to that company, and immediately start the process to determine if these tier 1 (and tier 2) suppliers will be impacted, and, if so, the degree to which you’ll be impacted. Not only will you know about an event days, or weeks, sooner than you would know without this platform (and by then it may have been too late to find an alternate source of supply or protect your data), but you can limit your discovery and mitigation efforts only to suppliers that might be affected, versus doing massive surveys and reach-outs (that can take days or weeks) to find out who might be impacted in the first place.

Interos is a one of the most powerful, and complete, risk intelligence platforms out there and one that should definitely be on your shortlist if you’re looking to get 360-degree visibility into your supplier, and supply chain, risk.

Need to Trade More Confidently? Maybe You Need Trademo to Monitor Your Supply Chain!

As you should be well aware by now (as we recently gave you a 10-part series on supply chain risk), supply chains are fraught with risks — that you need to manage, and that, in many cases you can only manage with visibility. In particular, multi-tier visibility down to the source raw material. You also need insight into key areas of regulatory compliance around H(T)S codes for trade (and ECCN for defense trade), sanctions and denied parties, and (known) forced/slave labour violations by any supplier in your multi-tier supply chain.

One application that can give you multi-tier visibility, detailed insight into key areas of compliance, supplier discovery, and even trade intelligence is Trademo. Centered around a global supply chain knowledge graph on over 5M buyer and supplier entities with over 100M relationships built upon public trade (import/export) data from over 140 countries, Trademo can provide unique multi-tier visibility and insight into your supply chain, and the supply chains of your competitors which can help you find potential suppliers who could also serve you and even identify other supplier locations that could be more relevant for you.

There are three main parts of the Trademo platform.

Global Supply Chain Intelligence
Supply Chain Visibility & Resilience
Global Trade Compliance

We’ll discuss these in reverse order, as that is the typical order in which organizations generally seek out, implement, and use these solutions.

Trademo‘s Global Trade Compliance module supports an organization with

HS Tariff Search, Validation and Classification across 140+ countries
ECCN Search
Sanctions Screening across over 640 global sanctions list
(Import/Export) Controls (and Embargo) Search
Product Master
Landed Cost Calculator

HS (Code) Search is by country, trade direction (import or export), and partial code or product keyword. (HS codes could be classified either by referring to the built-in tariff tree structure or using the AI model to classify the HS Codes.) it brings up all the matching codes based on the product key word (or partial HS code), as well as the computed match relevance. You can then select the code of interest and see the associated tariffs and duties, controls, and any associated rulings.

ECCN search is similar to HS (Code) Search and is by country and ecn/ml number or keyword and brings up the relevant subcategories that you can dive into and get relevant details.

Sanctions screening can be ad-hoc, bulk, or advance. Adhoc allows a sourcing / supply chain professional to enter a person, company, or vessel name and screen against any set of sanction lists of interest (one, some, or all). Bulk allows the same, but against a list of uploaded persons, companies, and/or vessels. Advance screening is similar to adhoc, but allows the user to limit to countries, specific locations, and even set thresholds for partial match retrievals. The user can also setup blacklists, so that any attempt to associate a product in the master with a supplier that is blacklisted fails, any search on it returns its status, and any export includes the blacklist status. The user can also setup watchlists (for daily monitoring) and any time a new sanction, control, etc. is detected for the person, company, or vessel, an alert is created in the tool and sent to the user through e-mail.

Sanctions screening are against rules that define collections of sanction lists that are relevant to the user and the types of screenings they usually do. For example, if the organization only sources from and/or two 20 countries, they may not care about any sanctions or embargoes against the remaining countries for which sanctions and embargoes are encoded in the system. In the Trademo system, rules are sorted into list groups (global sanctions, PEP, OFAC, health & human service, banking & investments, enforcement, and maritime) and then sub-groups by source (country, entity, etc.). The buyer can select what interests them, a threshold for matching, define a rule name, and then easy peasy search just those lists going forward.

When a sanction is found, extremely detailed information is returned and generally includes the entity name, the list, the country, the authority, all known entity (operating) aliases, effective date, expiry date (if a limited embargo, for example), company address / vessel birth and identifiers / personage citizenship or address, etc. A user can also bring up the full citation and download everything in PDF if they desire.

Controls bring up, for an import country or ISO Code and/or export country and ISO Code and/or country of origin and ISO Code and/or a HS Code, all related controls and embargoes along with their type (such as import permit or export permit), the controlling authority, and the scope of the control. As with a sanction or HS code, the user can click into a control of interest and see the complete details and download the source (as a PDF) if they so desire.

The Product Master allows the organization to manage their product database down to a SKU level, along with all countries of import, export, and associated HS codes. This makes it easy for the platform to automatically monitor for relevant changes to HS/ECCN codes, duty rates, controls, embargoes, etc. and notify the user when these changes occur.

The Landed Cost Calculator is very useful for sourcing professionals as it allows them, for a lot, to enter some basic information and source unit and carrier costs and get a complete total landed cost based upon the HS / ECCN code and all import and export tariffs.

The user needs to simply enter:

Country (of import, export, and origin), duties of interest (default, preferential, or both), and HS CODE
Mode of transport, incoterm, currency, value (and, optionally, unit of measurement & total quantity)
Freight, insurance, and any other known (sur)charges

The platform will then calculate the total landed cost that will include all the duties and tariffs on the lot, the known merchandise processing fees, the known vessel fees, the known port fees, and other known fees and give the user a total landed cost (where the user can see a 200K buy become a 250K or 300K or more buy and truly understand the cost of global sourcing). the user can also compare the landed cost across different sourcing markets.

Moving on to Trademo‘s Supply Chain Visibility & Resilience solution, it is essentially a supply chain mapping solution that allows an organization to see all of their 1 to n suppliers (3 by default, but more if they want) and filter into suppliers by tier, country, HS code, and associated trade lanes. They can create product groups by brand or region and just see the associated supply chains for those brands and regions as well. The default view shows them the supplier name, domicile country, HS codes supplied downstream, trade lanes used, tier 1 connection, and total shipment value. From this complete list, the user can select a subset of suppliers by country, HS code, and/or trade lane and see a graphical representation of their supply chain, augmented with trade value. It’s simple, but quickly informative and very useful to discovering just who is in your supply chain, as well as who is in a certain region / on a certain trade lane that was just impacted by a natural disaster or border shutdown and you need to react.

Finally, there is the foundational Global Supply Chain Intelligence intelligence offering (Trademo Intel) that is based on their core supply chain knowledge graph and all of the public trade data it incorporates. The entry point to Trademo Intel is the shipment search screen which allows the user to search across all bills of lading in all categories and retrieve all associated shipments, which can then be filtered by shipper details, consignee details, ports, cargo, and freight details, and see a summary, for the selected timeframe, of total shipments, total weight, and total value. They can then drill into (top) importers, exporters, and more detailed analytics. If the amount of data is overwhelming, they can limit to specific product categories, HS codes, shippers, or consignees before starting the search.

It’s a great tool for exploring your competitors’ supply chains, which, when limited to certain product (categories), allows you to discover potential suppliers you might not have known about otherwise. Furthermore, you can see the volumes they are capable of supplying globally and the trade lanes they are already navigating. While most risk solutions will give you credit, cyber, compliance, and/or sustainability risk, they don’t give you deep insights into products supplied, locations supplied from, lanes the supplier is using (which indicates which global regulations they comply with), and so on. When you click into an entity, you can see all of their trading partners, total shipments to/from each, HS Codes supplied, and associated shipments. They can then drill into any and all shipments of interest and see complete details. The analytics are super helpful in identifying the top HS codes, HS sections, modes of transport, and routes used by the entity.

It also allows an organization to keep tabs on global trade from a certain region and whether it is increasing or decreasing, which could signal tidal shifts that could affect future cargo availability, rates, and risks if there is over saturation or under saturation of a trade region predicted.

If you need global trade support around HS codes, sanctions or embargoes; supply chain visibility; and supplier discovery (and deep trade insight in this discovery), Trademo is a solution that should definitely be in your RFP short list. It’s easy to use, powerful, and already validated by a number of Global 3000 companies. Check it out and TRADE MOre confindently!

Source-to-Pay+ Part 10: Over 55 Supply Chain Risk Vendors to Check Out

Last quarter, we ran a 9-part series that served as An Introduction to Supply Chain Risk where we introduced you to the risk elements not covered by traditional supplier management platforms (which we covered in our 39 Steps … err … 30 Clues … err … 39 Part Series on Source to Pay where we listed over 90 supply management companies of which over 1/3 claimed to have some degree of “risk”, which we dub supplier “Uncertainty”, management).

In our series, we focussed heavily on corporate risk, third party risk (which included ESG, Human Rights, Regulatory Compliance), supply chain risk (including transparency, traceability, and multi-tier tracking), transport risk, cyber risk, and analytics. We also noted that our next instalment would provide a starting list of vendors that you could check out to meet (some of) your supply chain risk needs.

This is that instalment. Hopefully this starting list will be useful to you. In the months that come, the hope is that some of these will be covered

Legend

3P	3rd Party / TPRM
S/V	supplier risk / verification
SCT	supply chain transparency
T/L	transport / logistics
MT	multi-tier
C	cyber
ESG	Environmental, Social, Governance
HR	Human Rights
RC	Regulatory Compliance
BoM	Bill of Materials (Direct)
DX	Discovery
TX	Traceability

Vendor

LI/#Emps

S/V

SCT

T/L

ESG

BoM

411

117

681

166

200

Darkbeam (Apex Analytix)

765

165

275

254

102

NQC

104

Overhaul

312

Prevalent

161

Prewave

150

ProcessUnity (w/CyberGRX)

143

166

299

371

801

116

435

180

442

127

125

Supply Risk Solutions

116

ThirdPartyTrust (Bitsight)

947

The Supply Chain of Supply Chain Talent is Not Only Broken … It’s Running On Empty!

A recent article in Forbes noted that The Supply Chain of Supply Chain Talent Is Broken, which it is, and has been for well over a decade. The problems started back with the global first world truck driver shortages back in the early 2000s, but the real problems were much deeper and hidden from view due to the fact supply chains were otherwise running smoothly and no one was looking behind the curtain or shining a light into the dark recesses of the supply chain.

Why? Because of the rampant digitization of procurement, logistics, and supply chain over the past twenty years, a time when globalization reached its peak, conflict was at a minimum, inflation was in the rear-view mirror, and natural disasters were still manageable, supply chains just worked. Predictable processes, routes, costs, and flows allowed simple systems to manage the supply chains almost automatically. Supply Chains didn’t need traditional supply chain talent to run; they needed buyers, logistics managers, inventory operations, and compliance personnel who could use systems — IT geeks ruled the day!

At the same time, seasoned supply chain professionals — negotiators, logistics professionals, and inventory/warehouse managers — were retiring in droves, and no one was replacing them. More importantly, no one was replacing them because there was no perceived need. These were the individuals who where doing supply chains in the 80s and 90s, before modern systems managed everything, when there were still lots of regulations to deal with (as the EU was still forming), when you didn’t always have container ships available (or easy container transportation to all locales), and when you would have to know, by rote, who to call when a truck wasn’t at the factory or the dock for a pick-up. When you had to do everything by phone and fax, because email was a luxury; when you had to deal with dozens of import/export regulations (and know how to create the reports by hand), and how to manage logistics scheduling on paper, especially when availability of certain carriers or personnel would change by the day. When you had to truly know how supply chain operations worked end to end, and not just push buttons on a virtual screen.

But then they retired, and no one replaced them. Even worse, no one was recruited to replace them. The organizations saw no need, since the systems did everything, the EU and harmonized regulations across regions made trade easy, and the big global carriers managed logistics for them. As long as they had negotiators, system operators, outsourced carriers, and outsourced consultants to do the rest, who cared? They certainly didn’t.

Furthermore, because there was no need in the organizations, people who studied Operations Research and might have went into Supply Chain went elsewhere, and as demand shallowed, so did students, but more importantly, so did apprenticeships. Now, with disruptions on the rise, globalization retreating, inflation resurging, supply chains breaking due to slowdowns, (port) shutdowns, and double canal slowdowns/closures (Panama and Suez), and current systems not designed for the world today, there’s no one who can handle the current situation. And that’s why supply chains are broken, talent chains are broken, and most importantly, why they are empty.

All of this happened behind the scenes because no one was watching, no one was thinking about the future, and no one was doing a risk assessment or managing the risks that were destined to come. All despite the fact that natural disasters were on the rise, political tension was on the rise, and we were being warned that a pandemic was the top global risk for over a decade.

Now we are at a point where software alone won’t fix this, consultancies who don’t have talent either (despite telling you to go to China for two decades) won’t fix this, and hope won’t fix this. The only thing that will fix this is the re-introduction of supply chain apprenticeship programs, as noted by the Forbes article, along with the return of retirees with actual knowledge to mentor the new recruits, which is missed by the article. Most organizations, or consultancies, these days barely have enough talent to manage their own operations yet alone train a batch of new recruits on the side, especially if they didn’t live through the rise in global trade in the 80s and 90s. The retirees did, and they have the knowledge the consultancies, and modern systems, don’t. Along with new recruits, it is their (temporary) return that is needed to fix the supply chains.

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Next Generation Supply Management Defined