By Steve Purvis, Operations Director at Bis Henderson Space: In normal times, manufacturers and retailers would now be setting up the supply, warehousing and transport contracts to ensure the resilience of their supply and distribution chains against a series of ‘known unknowns’. A new Premier League season, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter … even if their magnitude is uncertain, the timings, at least, are firmly in the diary.
Or at least they were. Post-COVID, there is no guarantee they will happen at all. Consumers may tighten their purse strings and they may not even notice a Black Friday promotion when distress pricing is ubiquitous. The notorious ‘second wave’ of infection is an ever present threat. ‘Resilience’ is no longer about the ability to meet demand peaks, it is as much about being able to shed, postpone or redirect capacity.
There will be other viruses – novel forms are discovered almost daily – there will be natural disasters, from localised flooding to solar activity knocking out power grids, communications, the Internet, GPS. Human actions too may cause huge disruption, from Brexit to geopolitics.
Logistics professionals and their industries can control few if any of these risks, but they can and must respond and mitigate.
The response begins with having detailed and timely visibility of the supply chain so that impending threats can be acted upon quickly. Having a Plan B, Plan C, and even a Plan D will be essential. Important too, will be having the contacts and relationships to enable mitigation plans to be implemented both promptly and at acceptable cost.
Plans B to Z will almost always affect capacity requirements for warehousing, storage and ancillary operations. Agility and flexibility have always been highly prized supply chain attributes, but with such a preponderance of ‘unknown, unknowns’ a far higher level of responsiveness is now required and that demands a new way of thinking – a whole new set of strategies for flexing warehouse space.
The new thinking should start by considering what the requirements may be, under a range of possible scenarios. Often, these can be grouped together as situations that require a similar class of solution, even if they differ in detail.
Then, analyse what types of solution are practicably suitable and available – new or additional space, automation, changing working practices and so on – given constraints such as capital, cashflow, and the need to maintain business continuity.
Bis Henderson offers clients regular ‘clinics’ to review their changing needs and match them to what is or may be available, while access to our constantly updated supplier databases ensures that clients are alerted to opportunities in the areas where they are located, or wish to be located. Alert to opportunities, firms can be proactive in their warehousing strategies, not merely reactive.
Thinking and working this way, partnering with a specialist warehouse space consultancy like Bis Henderson Space is about much more than the tactical location of spare capacity to cover unplanned contingencies – although we do that as well. It is about improving supply chain resilience by creating reasoned strategies and plans for warehousing, distribution and inventory, and using market intelligence to implement them, and if necessary pivot between them, on a continuous basis.
Bis Henderson Space
e: steve.purvis@bis-henderson.com
w: visit www.bis-hendersonspace.com
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