Closing Out 2020

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This year has posed unprecedented challenges that changed our lives dramatically. Moving forward, how can we turn 2020 around and learn from the catastrophe?

PANDEMIC STRIKES
The year of 2020 started off with the Covid-19 virus that seemingly paused the world. Country lockdowns, social distancing, and ill-stricken staff have all been contributing factors in halting business operations. Notably, a pause in the global supply chain affected businesses and consumers alike. Demands were hardly met due to freight expectations of lower demands in conjunction with a falling economy. Nearing the middle and end of the year, there was a recovery in the Asian supply chain that resulted in suppliers playing catch-up with piled up demands.
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Holiday Demands Busying Delivery Services

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With the holiday seasons approaching and ports still catching up with shipments, will the delay in receiving goods persist through 2020 to 2021?

CONTAINERS AND THE SUPPLY CHAIN
Supply chains around the world are facing massive pressure as the year closes out. In conjunction with the lack of shipping containers, a new difficultly of low productivity in handling containers at ports and terminals have also threatened the efficiency of delivering products on time. Various ports are seeing a dwindling number of staff who can help process the shipments as Covid-19 continues to claim more victims.

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Sold Out: Dealing with Supply Shortage During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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If you have visited Home Depot or any other stores recently, you will find that many popular products, such as large household appliances, are all sold out as of couple of months ago and new inventory may take over one and a half months to arrive. What is going on?

This is a good opportunity to study and evaluate supply chain operations of many products during this pandemic. From a store or retail outlet perspective, the first phase was the consumer panic in both March and April 2020, when COVID-19 entered into the US. Store sales plummeted as consumer spending hit an all-time low due to the lockdown. Store sales later surged in May and June as people were in the midst of working on numerous projects from their homes. By July, stores had very low inventories. By August, the most popular products were all sold out due to inefficient restocking processes. The depletion of the supply chain was because of the very limited capacity from mostly local suppliers with different kinds of restrictions such as delivery, warehouse, production, etc., to meet COVID-19 requirements.

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What You Need to Know About the Manufacturing Status of SE Asia During the Pandemic

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Southeast Asia manufacturing countries were both some of the earliest countries affected by COVID-19 and the quickest to return to pre-virus capacity and resume economic growth. While factories are up and running, there remain challenges facing businesses. Travel is still very difficult with a mandatory 14 day observation of hotel isolation, which make short term business visits unlikely.

The impact of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia was first seen in late January to early February, as the outbreak was growing in China. Every aspect of the economy and daily life was impacted, with manufacturing and industrial supply chains being disproportionately disrupted. Prior to COVID-19, Southeast Asia was experiencing unprecedented growth fueled by the growing tensions from US-Sino relations, but the growing fears of a pandemic quickly quelled all future economic prospects with threats of an economic shut down or stoppage in the global supply chain.

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