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An Ode to Our Miraculous Supply Chain

In 2019 we had become accustomed to a pretty consistent and abundant way of doing things. Today, stores still don’t have our favorite products, and online shopping comes with inevitable shipping delays. COVID-19 continues to wreak unpredictable havoc at every stage of production around the world, and by now, we all understand a dysfunctional supply chain well. Even here in the U.S., these issues are impacting lives in a much more critical way.

Complaining about the problems in our supply chain is easy, but once you know how many moving parts make up a fully-functioning one, it seems impossible that it could ever work at all. That it happens, unnoticed, under our noses every day with enough reliability to serve as the foundation for most businesses is almost a miracle. Instead of complaining about supply chain issues, here are four reasons we should sing odes to its existence:

1. It Takes Seeds to Make a Sandwich

The supply chain is from end to end, or what I call “seed to sandwich.” Put a seed in the ground, and you already have a clear picture — the seed’s origins, the hand that plants it, the quality of the soil, and the required sunlight. As your plant grows, you can test and measure those elements to produce the best results. Managing the supply chain requires that same clear understanding, from picking and packing to shipping and distribution, all the way to the sandwich that my business gets into a consumer’s hands.

Of course, that sandwich is composed of several ingredients. The bread, sauce, even the packaging come from multiple seeds. Each component has specific considerations along the way to ensure they consistently end up exactly the same. If we run out of bread, I have to start imagining ways to operate as a business that supplies sandwich shops without it. Maybe I can come up with an internal solution to this existential supply chain crisis, but for our business owners, running out of bread can close their doors.

2. The Domino Effect, But on a Trampoline

The supply chain is so easy to disrupt: one little hiccup in any area can topple everything. As experts scrambled to understand this new virus, massive hiccups were choking up supply chains around the world. The pandemic sent tons of people home without work, and many decided not to return. Now, distribution warehouses have no drivers, and our biggest crisis has been getting finished food products to restaurants. Without workers to pack or drive the trucks, products get stuck — a death sentence for inventory that can spoil, like food.

Most days, I cancel one or more conference calls to rush out and find other trucks, drivers or routes just to keep operations going. The enormity of today’s problem is that COVID is causing the same hiccups for everybody, sending us all looking for solutions in the same places. Even hoarding caused more problems than it helped – products eventually restocked and all people got was an extra year’s worth of paper towels stored in their basement. Remove a domino from the supply chain and the whole thing comes to a stop. Everyone stampeding to fix it only makes things worse.

3. Find One of Many Needles From Several Different Haystacks

When I visit the grocery store and notice shelves that are light on products, I wonder where in the chain things went wrong. Was it a production problem? A trucking problem? Did they run out of the product? Was it not produced? Not shipped? Did they not have enough packaging? Enough people to get their product to its final destination? A problem as small as a shortage of tape to seal up the boxes could cause shelves to end up empty.

Before the pandemic, most people only ever thought about supply chains when a store ran out of a product at the moment they needed it. The store may have done everything right, but somewhere along the way, any one of the various vendors responsible for the parts, packaging or processes behind a final product might have faltered. Solving a supply chain problem first requires considering all those parts and finding out where the jam is. Then, once you find that hidden problem in one of many haystacks, you need alternative solutions to work around it.

4. Its Endurance Is a Miracle

Even facing the worst supply chain crisis in history, here in the U.S., we can still find abundance. When a friend of mine was planning to go to Cuba for Christmas, his grandmother sent a list of items she wanted him to bring — basics like aspirin and coffee filters — because they had none in their half-empty grocery stores. I imagined my own medicine cabinet, which is an entire pharmacy in my bathroom. I realized that some supply chains genuinely don’t work — barren shelves, shuttered stores and people accustomed to living without essential goods.

I might complain about a store being out of the specific detergent I want, but even now, I can still buy another brand offering a very similar product. Meanwhile, a friend of mine living in the same city is traveling only 90 miles south of it to bring the fundamentals to his family because they have no other way of getting them. Rather than grumble about how the supply chain is struggling to get our favorite products onto store shelves, we should be amazed that they ever show up there in the first place.

Life can be uncomfortable when the supply chain stops working as perfectly as we expect, but we must appreciate that we only expect this because most of the time, it does. Beyond ingredients, there are health, safety and environmental considerations — people, products and even animals that demand appropriate treatment. So much goes into making that final sandwich not only tasty but safe that, when you really stop to think about it, coordinating it all is pretty amazing.

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