With the pandemic in the picture, all industries brought their attention to reimagining how they could make work better along with having a positive impact on the world.

The retail supply chain network disruption at the onset of the crisis was humongous, to an extent where fundamental human needs like food and other necessary household items also fell short in supply. At this period, retailers played a critical service role to ensure that all members of the society have access to necessities without compromising safety. This was possible with the help of structured digital strategies that led retailers from recovery to resilience. But even then, a lot of retailers lagged behind because of the lack of knowledge and understanding of supply chain automation.

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So, how does the supply chain go from recovery to resilience? Well, we’ve broken it down into 3 stages: Get through Recovery, Pause for Discovery, and Follow the Steps to Resilience.

First comes getting through recovery. In this stage, here are a few things you need to take care of:
– Avoid making too many or unnecessary changes. Disruptions temporarily throw supply chains out of control, it is supply chain optimization that brings the supply chain back into control.
– Avoid historic forecasting. In cases like an announced pandemic, historical data from the last 3 to 6 years do not account for much. What retailers need is a plan for the upcoming months which can only be forecasted with immediately beginning to store data digitally, with the least human intervention possible.
– Practice wargaming. While businesses may lack hard data to guide their decisions, they shouldn’t lack people with enough experience to assess the present landscape and suggest how to react.
– Real-time communication. What your business needs, is a simple way to communicate.

Second comes pausing for discovery. While pursuing supply chain resilience, it is crucial that businesses take a pause and consider what the transition entails. This helps organizations in remembering the important lessons of recovery which include identifying business operations and pieces of information that run your business. It simultaneously gives you an overview of all the problems you need to resolve in priority. This is the stage where you consider the information or tools that you didn’t have and whether it was related to suppliers, production capacity, inventory levels, etc and evaluate the benefits of adopting a digital model for your supply chain to run simulations and scenarios that could help in a smooth recovery.

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Third comes following the steps to resilience. Resilience is not planning for a similar future but about preparing for an uncertain future. Keeping that in mind, here’s what an organization can keep in consideration while following resilience:
– Never put off resiliency. Don’t put off resiliency planning just because things are better now. As much as it seems like a good idea, we must focus on the newest challenges and invest in supply chain resilience before the next emergency.
– Commitment to improve your digital supply chain. For retailers, capturing data and analyzing it for insights or expansion in a digital form is very crucial. This helps them in targeting parts of their operations that are most critical to ensure resilience.
– Don’t confuse resilience with simplicity. Retailers who aim to have resilient supply chains require increased complexity to minimize or eliminate single points of failure.
– Incorporate optimization models into your operations. This benefits organizations when disruptions intervene by allowing a company’s operations to adapt and respond faster.

Conclusion: Knowing the importance of simplicity during recovery, discovery, and building resilience will help your organization in knocking down supply chain disruptions faster, better, and smarter when the next time they walk into your lives unannounced.

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