Supply Chain Challenges 2020

What were the top supply chain issues in 2019 and what are the Supply Chain Challenges 2020? We have been monitoring the most important topics in supply chain management for quite a while. Next to the excellent publications by Gartner, Supply Chain Magazine, The Hackett Group and SCM World Future we conducted interviews with our clients to track the important challenges in supply chain and, more importantly, how to tackle these issues. And although these mentioned surveys are not exactly the same, the most important topics are very similar.
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Today’s top 3 issues

Looking at these different sources, we see the following three most mentioned supply chain challenges: (1) Cost & Performance Pressure, (2) Adaptation of New Technology,  and (3) Business Continuity. Pressure on Cost and Service is traditionally ranked high, especially in the supply chain realm and given the current turmoil in the world, it does not surprise that Business Continuity ranks high.
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What is on the horizon in 2020?

What made quite a jump in importance is Business Continuity and the Adoption of New Technology. With all that is going on in the world, such as Brexit, trade-wars and geo-political incidents, the concerns about Business Continuity, War and Terrorism is growing rapidly. An interesting development is the growing importance of Sustainability. This is a topic that is rapidly becoming more important.
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Sustainability

One of the main challenges is the adoption of sustainability. More and more supply chain leaders are confronted with an increased focus on renewable bio-based materials, energy consumption efficiency, climate change & global warming and life cycle thinking in the value chain. From isolated sustainability initiatives to programs on organizational level, that monitor emissions from all activities across the organization, including buildings’ energy use, industrial processes and company vehicles. The supply chain leader is at the heart of this discussion and therefore we see a distinct increase of importance.
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Sources
In total about 25 topics were mentioned by the interviewed supply chain leaders while finding the top supply chain challenges 2019. The selection of the eight supply chain issues presented above, although arbitrary, are considered to be the top-ranked by our panel. We thank our clients that were willing to participate in this round of interviews and recommend the reports and surveys that we used to validate our own research to derive the top 8 issues for supply chain leadership.
1) SCM World Future of Supply Chain surveys 2017, 2018
2) Supply Chain Digital Transformation Study. The Hackett Group (2018)
3) The Most Important Boardroom Discussions, Supply Chain Magazine no.29 Q2, 2018
4) Gartner Top 8 Supply Chain Technology Trends for 2018, February 27, 2018
5) Gartner top 10 Data analytics


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