Sunday 11th Juneth A section of a major highway (I95) near Philadelphia on the US East Coast collapsed when a truck carrying gasoline crashed and caught fire under the highway.
The highway is a major commuter and commercial route that runs the entire length of the East Coast from Maine to Florida and carries an estimated 160,000 vehicles per day, of which an estimated 14,000 are commercial trucks.
Obviously, this will have a significant impact on holidaymakers, travelers and commerce for many weeks, if not months.
How to address business impact
The reality is that we plan in the ideal world and execute in the real world. And in the real world, things don’t always go according to plan. When a major event like the I95 road collapse affects your plans, short- and long-term actions need to be taken into account.
Within a short span of time:
- Identify all affected shipments that are already in transit or on the way
- Notify customers whose orders will be affected (delayed)
- leverage transportation plan Tools to attempt to re-route shipments where possible
- Identify production that will be less than the material affected by the delay
- adjust Production Plan of
Additional long-term steps require re-planning your approach for the next few months to identify alternative road routes, modes of transport (train, boat, air) and logistics providers.
Flexibility to adapt and reduce risk
It is also important to design your the supply chain To meet disruptions and respond to business opportunities. This requires having processes and plans in place:
- Develop and implement supply chain risk management and business continuity strategies.
- Diversify supply chains geographically to reduce supply side risks to any one country, region, or route.
- Multi-source valuable goods or strategic components to reduce dependence on a single supplier and a single location.
- Identify alternate means of transportation in case of disruption.
- adopt a list optimization strategy on the business network to buffer against disruptive events.
- Balancing of shoring, near-shoring and on-shoring construction strategies.
While no one can plan for an unforeseen event like a road collapse, we can build resilience and contingency plans into our supply chains to minimize the impact.
Download it to learn more about how to lead on the path to a risk resilient and sustainable supply chain oxford economics research,
follow me Twitter,
Source: www.forbes.com
