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Watch for the stampede. It’s coming.

Lots of legislators are kicking around statutory responses to the coronavirus right now, but our community is not waiting.

Steve Geary
By Steve GearyMay 07, 2020
Steve Geary

Steve Geary is adjunct faculty at the University of Tennessee's Haaslam College of Business and is a lecturer at The Gordon Institute at Tufts University. He is the president of the Supply Chain Visions family of companies, consultancies that work across the government sector. Steve is a contributing editor at DC Velocity, and editor-at-large for CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly.

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“Like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the coronavirus pandemic is a world-shattering event whose far-ranging consequences we can only begin to imagine today,” according to Foreign Policy Magazine.

While eloquent, the assertion is misleading. If you are a professional in the supply chain, you began weeks ago. And while you may be accelerating, the vector is obvious.

Last year we were looking for alternative sources of supply offshore to supplant Chinese vendors. The vector was clear. Low cost was the goal, and that meant generally rearranging the deck chairs in Asia.

Supply Chain practitioners are dusting off some old vocabulary. Reshoring. Near-shoring. Onshoring. Resilience. Adaptability. Best value.

Lots of legislators are kicking around statutory responses to the coronavirus right now, but our community is not waiting. Supply chain leaders are already making the shift. We are not beginning to imagine it, as Foreign Policy magazine asserts. We are doing it.

We’re box kickers, and proud of it.

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In 2015, blockchain (the technology that makes digital currencies such as bitcoin work) was starting to be explored as a solution for supply chains. It promised cost savings, increased efficiency, and heightened transparency, among other benefits. For that reason, many companies were happy to run pilots testing blockchain for themselves. Today, these small-scale projects have been replaced by large-scale enterprise adoption of blockchain-based supply chain solutions. There are plenty of choices now for blockchain supply chain products, platforms, and providers. This makes the option to use blockchain available now to nearly everyone in the sector. This wealth of choice does, however, make it more difficult to decide which blockchain integration is best (or, indeed, if your organization needs to use it at all). To find the right blockchain, companies need to consider three factors: cost, sustainability, and the ultimate goal of trying new technology.

Choosing the right blockchain for an enterprise supply chain begins with the most basic consideration: cost. Blockchains work by securely recording “transactions,” and in a supply chain, those transactions are essentially database updates. However, making such updates has varying costs on different chains. If a container moves locations, that entry is updated, and a transaction is recorded. Enterprises need to figure out how many products, containers, or pieces of information they will process daily. Each of these can be considered a transaction. Now, some blockchains cost not even $1 to record a million movements. Other chains can cost thousands of dollars for the same amount of recording. Understanding the amount of activity you will need to record against the cost of transactions is the first place for an enterprise to start when considering blockchain. Ask the provider which blockchain their product is built on, and its average transaction cost. This will help you find the most cost-effective product or integration.

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Over the last two decades, globalization became more intense, and with it, competition among companies and their supply networks. The constant fight for new sources of raw materials at a more competitive cost, the development of suppliers in low-cost countries, and the ability to manage logistic chains have become part of the routine of strategic sourcing.

In today's economic environment, companies are continuously pressured to reduce costs to combat slower growth; to offset increases in material prices, energy, and transportation; and to counterbalance various other pressures, such as inflation. Despite these issues and the economic instability worldwide, companies must continue to differentiate themselves and find growth opportunities to compete in the global marketplace. For example, in order to boost revenues and fuel growth, many companies are now under as much pressure to reduce product life cycles and speed-to-market as they are to find savings and reduce operational costs.

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A transportation management system (TMS) is a critical tool for all supply chain and logistics practitioners. It provides shippers, third-party logistics companies (3PLs), and fourth-party logistics providers (4PLs) with the visibility they need to manage the supply chain and optimize the movement of products and goods. There are various types of transportation management systems, and while using a basic TMS is better than no TMS at all, advanced transportation management systems offer enhanced functionality and can scale with you as your business grows.

Getting the right TMS in place can have considerable benefits, as a TMS helps with planning and executing the movement of goods on a comprehensive level, which aids in reducing the risks of disruptions at every point in the supply chain. Companies that better manage risk will see significant savings. Data from the supply chain risk intelligence company Interos found that of the organizations they surveyed in 2021, the average organization lost $184 million in global supply chain disruptions. Similarly, a McKinsey study found that, within 10 years, the cost of supply chain disruptions adds up to nearly half of a company’s profits.


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Strikes and potential strikes have plagued the supply chain over the last few years. An analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Economics Policy Institute concluded that the number of workers involved in major strike activity increased by 280% in 2023 from 2022. Currently, the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast ports are facing the threat of another dockworker strike after they return to the negotiating table in January to attempt to resolve the remaining wage and automation issues. Similarly, Boeing is continuing to contend with a machinists strike.

Strikes, or even the threat of a strike, can cause significant disruptions across the global supply chain and have a massive economic impact. For example, when U.S. railroads were facing the threat of a strike in 2022, many companies redirected their cargo to avoid work stoppages and unhappy customers. If the strike had occurred, it would have had a massive economic impact. The Association of American Railroads (AAR), estimated that the economic impact of a railroad strike could be $2 billion per day.

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