Unrelenting pressure on company supply chains from increased costs and geo-political uncertainty is creating unacceptable lead times. For many manufacturers this poses a strategic risk to their business and, as a result, they are placing their supply chains under the microscope and adopting a range of strategies to manage relationships with suppliers at home and overseas.
The Make UK/Infor No Weak links: Building Supply Chain Resilience report found that companies from both the EU and, further afield, are now significantly more cautious about supplying into the UK. This could be for a range of reasons including the difficult political relationships affecting trade between the UK and EU, the trading landscape having become practically more difficult with the EU, the prospect of regulatory divergence and, the broader global challenge for competitiveness being played out between economic superpowers including the EU.
Supply chain disruption has created unprecedented times for businesses across the globe in recent years, a pattern of volatility which is fast approaching a permanent state. However, resilience in supply chains is growing and driving new behaviours as companies diversify and increasingly seek new ways of doing business and managing their processes.
Verity Davidge
Director of Policy, Make UK
There is no escaping volatility, but use of the right supply chain technologies can dramatically mitigate the worst impacts of disruption. Whilst the report shows nearly half of manufacturers are taking advantage of analytics for improving visibility, the real value will come from increased use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to help identify and predict events, analyse the best alternatives, and automate responses, giving manufacturers a competitive edge.
Andrew Kinder
SVP International Strategy and Sales Support, Infor
