Distributors work with feds to ship in medical supplies | New normal brings adjustments to logistics, warehouses | Owens & Minor increasing production of PPE
The federal government has partnered with large medical distributors for the first of about 20 planned supply flights from China, with additional shipments scheduled from Malaysia and Vietnam.
Warehouse operators are curtailing distribution and fulfillment operations in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, while Amazon and Walmart are hiring thousands of new workers to meet customer demand. Gloves and other safety gear are in high demand, and as Imperial Dade President Jason Tillis notes, "There's not really a playbook for this."
Owens & Minor has added shifts and extended factory production time to keep up with personal protective equipment demand, with the capacity expansion effort expected to take up to six months, says CEO Ed Pesicka. Demand is global, not just in the US, he says.
Boosting business by meeting customer needs and expectations in wholesale Wholesale customers want the same kind of convenience and immediate gratification that you want as a consumer. What do businesses need to do to deliver on that? Hear from experts at NetSuite, Logistics Bureau and SmartBrief in this webinar.
Distributors can evaluate which technology solutions are the best fit based on how fast they can be implemented and how long they will take to solve a problem, writes Ricardo Craft. Companies need to ask, "What will it cost, what will it save in hours or resources and, most importantly, how quickly?" he writes.
Almost 75% of companies are seeing coronavirus-related supply issues, according to a poll by the Institute of Supply Chain Management. B2B companies should communicate clearly with buyers about possible delays as the pandemic strains logistics systems, says Gartner's Jason Daigler.
State of the Wholesale Supply Chain Industry in 2020 For the third straight year, Blue Ridge asked wholesale supply industry leaders about their challenges, how they're thinking about solving them and how they're dealing with the pace of technological change. One key finding for the 2020 survey is the adoption of new machine learning, such as A.I., which is on the rise as a strategy to combat supply chain disruption. Get the report to read more.
Distributors have no choice but to overhaul their sales structures, but simply making this change won't help if the value add isn't defined or isn't unique, says Justin Roff-Marsh. "I think that some distributors are going to have to realize that they need to wrap services around the products that they supply in order to stay relevant," he says.
A culture of trust is vital to a remote work environment, says Wade Foster of Zapier. Foster offers tips such as emphasizing transparency and communication, getting to know each other in a virtual environment like Slack, setting clear expectations and focusing on output rather than hours worked.
According to NAW Institute Fellow Mark Dancer, "The hard truth about the Coronavirus is that extreme, unexpected events are becoming an essential new requirement of effective supply chain planning. In the current crisis, distributors are doing the crucial work of delivering critical products to essential businesses. As the virus peaks, distributors will play a leading role in rebooting our economy. As industries recover, a new normal will set it." Read his blog post.
NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence Fellow Mark Dancer says that to build a winning customer-driven digital value chain requires new foresight and smart investments. It won't happen overnight, but a customer-driven digital value chain is the future. To be ready, distributors must begin retooling their people, culture, digital investments and innovation plans. Read his post.
