Most of the UK organizations are admitting that their supply chain requires improvement, and about 58% think their supply chain requires a significant improvement.
As per research, 84% of UK businesses are planning to move on from the 50-year-old ‘just in time’ supply chain model, which gave importance to costs above all else when selecting suppliers, to a ‘just in case’ approach.
As per findings, since the start of the pandemic, supply chain issues have been disastrous for businesses in the UK. More than 60% of businesses experienced delays in production of goods/delivery of services, including revenue decrease and over 50% experienced a loss of customers.
It comes as little to no surprise that almost a quarter of businesses expect supply chain issues to last until Summer of 2023.
For many firms, increasing the price of their products/services isn’t really an option. 60% of businesses want increased government collaboration with industry. Most of the industry people believe that government needs to monitor UK’s supply chain itself and invest wherever necessary. Most of the UK businesses think deglobalizing UK’s supply chains would be disastrous towards economic growth however over half plan to prioritize UK-based supply chain solutions.
Earlier supply chain management was mostly about cutting costs. Now the challenge of staying ahead of consumer demand, while improving resilience, cutting carbon emissions, reducing staff churn and keeping costs down needs attention. There have been years of political, social, and economic uncertainties, on top of a global pandemic, all of which have exacerbated challenges with the UK’s current supply chain models.
Resilient supply chains need to be sustainable, not only in terms of the environment, but sustainable against developments in technology and infrastructure in the UK and abroad. For years, supply chain management has focused on keeping them lean and fast as a priority. This is different from being agile and resilient. The ‘just in time’ models have ended, and businesses have to start putting the same expectations on their supply chain as they do on their wider business, structuring themselves to be ‘just in case’, so that when disaster occurs, they can pull through. Those who will fail to consider this are in for tough months ahead.