Six Capabilities Organizations Need for the Next Supply Chain Crisis
A new publication from researchers at Schulich urges organizations to build six complementary capabilities to better prepare for the next supply disruption.
Supply disruptions are inevitable, but organizations can build the capability to avoid, mitigate and respond effectively. This is the focus of “Get Ready for the Next Supply Disruption,” published in the Sloan Management Review. The article was co-authored by M. Johnny Rungtusanatham, Canada Research Chair in Supply Chain Management and Professor of Operations Management & Information Systems at Schulich, and David A. Johnston, George Weston Limited Chair in Sustainable Supply Chains and Centre Director of Schulich’s George Weston Ltd Centre. The authors also acknowledge the contribution of Schulich alumnus Parthiban Dhakshnamurthy, a recent graduate of the Master of Supply Chain Management Program, toward their research.
According to the researchers, it’s not enough for companies to ask the question of what can be done to avoid supply disruptions in their risk planning efforts. Companies must also ask the complementary question of what can be done to manage “for” the eventuality of being disrupted.
Organizations must build six so-called ADDAPT capabilities to be better prepared for the next crisis-triggered supply disruption, argue the researchers. The six capabilities – anticipate, diagnose, detect, activate resources for, protect against, and track threats – together constitute the ADDAPT framework, which is based on the co-authors’ research into how public agencies and private enterprises experience and respond to supply disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Organizations can benchmark their preparedness for future supply disruptions – whether from pandemics, climate change or global conflict – by assessing the presence and maturity of the six ADDAPT capabilities, say the co-authors.