Trade and Media Publications

Pharmaceutical companies faced many challenges when it came to producing and distributing the new COVID-19 vaccines. One that received the most attention? The need to keep the new mRNA vaccines super cold during shipment and distribution. (Excerpt from "A SHOT IN THE ARM: HOW SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, AND SUPPLY CHAINS CONVERGED TO VACCINATE THE WORLD)

Of the countless problems the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown at companies, a global shortage of microchips is one of the most pernicious. Eventually, the supply of chips will recover, but will affected markets then return to normality? The likely answer is no. In dealing with the scarcity of chips and associated impact on production schedules, markets have helped to seed another crisis in the form of a global economic recession.

Pandemic-related issues such as product shortages have raised questions about the viability of “just-in-time” supply chains and the role lean strategies may play in the strained availability of manufacturing components and consumer goods.

What can the pandemic teach us about the supply chains of the future?

Adapted from The New (Ab)Normal: Reshaping Business and Supply Chain Strategy Beyond Covid-19. Copyright (c) 2020 by Yossi Sheffi. Used with permission of the publisher, MIT CTL Media Cambridge, Mass. All rights reserved.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, in what ultimately became perhaps the greatest global supply chain disruption since World War II, employees began working from home, consumers were battling to hoard toilet paper (detailing the origins of this and other shortages) and companies were navigating the combined impacts of changing consumer demand, disrupted suppliers, fractured transportation links and new workplace regulations. At the same time, I began watching another story unfolding in the laboratories of universities and pharmaceutical companies...

Vaccines are helping us survive this pandemic. The climate emergency requires a similar leap in technology and the international co-operation needed to deliver it, says Yossi Sheffi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

More than 74 million Americans think differently from the prevailing wisdom found on elite university campuses. Universities could help bridge that divide.

Many institutions of higher education, as well as high schools, media outlets, and businesses are engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. At universities, these efforts have centered on student admission, faculty hiring, and mandatory reeducation of all faculty and staff using actors to play scenarios of racism and exclusion. Those efforts define DEI in terms of race, gender, and sexual orientation.

On most university campuses as well as in many institutions, notably media outlets and some corporations, DEI efforts are focused on internal staff. At universities, these reform efforts have centered on students’ admissions, faculty hiring, and a plethora of activities aimed at re-education. Those efforts, as well as MIT’s, define DEI in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, and related parameters. In particular, universities argue that diversity of race, gender, and sexual orientation is important to generate a vibrant learning and research environment.

The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics asked two leaders, Lynn Torrel, the chief procurement officer and supply chain officer at Flex, and Dave Wheeler, the chief operating officer at New Balance, to relate their pandemic experiences. The executives learned much about managing supply chains in extreme adversity, and how such a crisis requires companies to be innovative.

Despite the shaky circumstances upon which many industries find themselves in 2021, the window on North America’s economy given by the petrochemical industry is showing a positive picture, even as companies experience both cyclical and structural shifts. The business of this critical sector, which touches 96% of all manufactured goods and in the US accounts for a quarter of GDP, is having to adapt its supply lines to the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic while at the same time dealing with forces from bot