INTERVIEW
HELMING THE WINDS OF CHANGE “When the dust settles down, we will see some substantial changes in supply chains. This disruption has been a wake-up call for many supply chains. In my opinion, the new changes will be the positive outcome of the pandemic. More and more supply chains now realize that they cannot operate effectively in the long run unless they account for the possibilities of disruptions. This is pushing them to design resilient and transparent supply chains,” believes Prof. Subodha Kumar, Paul R. Anderson Distinguished Chair Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management and the Founding Director of the Center for Business Analytics and Disruptive Technologies, Temple University’s Fox School of Business.
Prof. Subodha Kumar has secondary appointments in Information Systems and Statistical Science Departments. He also serves as the Concentration Director for Ph.D. Program in Operations and Supply Chain Management. He is a board member for many organizations. He has been awarded a Changjiang Scholars Chair Professorship by the China’s Ministry of Education. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He has served on the faculty of University of Washington and Texas A&M University.
During and just before COVID-19 pandemic struck business in the end of 2019, businesses couldn’t forecast demand patterns. How did companies deal with such uncertainties? Let me answer this question by first discussing the key causes of disruptions in demand forecasting and then comparing/contrasting the response of different supply chains. During the pandemic, businesses had problem in forecasting demand because of multiple factors. First, the forecasting models are usually based on repeating patterns, but what we saw during the pandemic was unprecedented. Therefore, our models were unable to capture the continuously moving unforeseen parts (especially for those products/services that got severely impacted by the pandemic). Second, for many products/services, we do not have clear visibility in the supply chain.
20 CELERITY January - February 2022
