“Because of that, supply chains are not as brittle as they were three years ago,” he said. “There could be another huge black swan event in a month that throws everything upside down; but for right now, it seems like respondents are predicting steadiness in the supply chain.”If anything, the pandemic’s shock to the supply chain should be a wake-up call, said Jack Buffington, director of supply chain and sustainability at First Key Consulting and assistant professor of supply chain management at the University of Denver. “I would categorize it as ‘efficiently broken,’” said Buffington, whose own book about supply chains, “Reinventing the Supply Chain: A 21st Century Covenant with America,” had its release delayed due to supply chain issues. “All supply chains really are is supply and demand, and there’s been so much disruption in materials and consumer demand related to labor and inflation and geopolitics,” he said. The complexities related to a globalized supply chain, human systems aren’t capable of handling it.”He added: “Covid wasn’t the cause of the problems with the supply chain, it was a trigger to show how bad it was,” he said.

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