Covid19: A Chain is as Strong as its Weakest Link.
Covid19: A Chain is as Strong as its Weakest Link.
We at Avectous have spent the last 30 years working in global supply chain and know that Covid19 is going to have an impact on our world unlike anything we have ever seen in our lifetimes.
If you work in supply chain related industries, then you already understand how intricately our entire world is linked. Your morning coffee has traveled through many hands, vehicles, and machines before it meets your favorite coffee mug.
The explosion of this new Covid19 virus is confusing for many people who do not understand the complex nature of supply chain and data. Covid19 is a crash course in our global interconnectivity, as well as the concept of exponential growth. It’s also a reminder of the remarkable power of big data.
Data is powerful because numbers don’t lie – numbers are not emotional.
As humans, we make emotional choices due to hope, habit, fear, ego and a slew of other emotions. This is because human intuition has a hard time understanding data. Our brains tend to think emotionally and linearly – as opposed to logarithmically. It’s the same reason many people don’t save for retirement, don’t understand compound interest or they buy stocks just because they’ve “got a good feeling”.
The phrase “exponential growth” is familiar to many people, and yet we sometimes do not respect what it really means. We can anchor on a small series of numbers and then feel suddenly surprised when those numbers become big… even when the overall numbers follow a consistent pattern.
Covid19 has been spreading exponentially and as it does, it reveals the weak links in the global supply chain.
Let’s look at the geographic concentration of factories built in certain parts of the world – particularly the developing world. Where are the weakest links?
How can the health of your staff affect your production? Or the cost of gas? Could that halt production?
In the pyramid of human needs what is more critical; medical supplies, food or water? We can guess at an answer, but it probably is not the correct answer because there are thousands of variables that determine the answer. The best answers may be something that we haven’t even considered. Data can reveal remarkable, invisible and counter-intuitive solutions.
Today in 2020, we are incredibly fortunate to live in a time of technological sophistication where computers can crunch massive data with astounding speed.
Remember that during the 1918 influenza pandemic (which ravaged all of Europe and America) our ancestors did not have ANY of this technology to track the spread or pattern of that virus. Nor did they have the ability to communicate worldwide and instantaneously about how to “flatten the curve”, or when to “physically-distance” from each other.
Today, we are armed with incredible medical and technological tools to minimize the impact of this pandemic. Medical breakthroughs will present themselves in the coming weeks and months.
It is too soon to know how vast the fallout of this virus will be – but we do know this: we humans are resilient and adaptable creatures.
Stay healthy. Stay strong. Stay Calm.
Team Avectous.
