To help the country recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the government and the business sector must implement a national pandemic supply chain augmentation plan, the top official of the Procurement & Supply Institute of Asia (Pasia) and TransProcure Corp. said on Wednesday.
“This is what we told the government and the business sector to focus on, because until now we cannot see somebody taking charge of our supply chain,” Pasia Chairman and TransProcure Chief Executive Officer Charlie Villasenor said during the “Supply Chains in Covid-19 and in the New World” webinar organized by the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations and Harvard Kennedy School of Alumni Association of the Philippines.
According to him, the plan involves integrated supply chain planning that includes managing capacity constraints across the end-to-end supply chain demand-and-supply systems.
It also includes strategic sourcing to secure supply while gaining the most advantageous deals and putting in place an optimized logistics network that would unblock any physical flow constraint.
To implement this plan, Villasenor said the government “should really identify who can really help them and has a lot of experience when it comes to the supply chain.”
“I always say that [those who] become CEOs are those that come from the supply chain sector. I may be biased about this, but these are a rare breed of professionals,” he added.
“There are a lot of very talented and qualified Filipinos. It has to be a combination of good military and business skills, so if that person has that caliber, then we have to make sure that the government attracts them.”
While many countries have been severely affected by the pandemic, Villasenor said the Philippines could be a procurement-and-supply-chain services capital if the needed interventions would be put in place.
“We think we could make the country efficient if we just focus on the supply chain. We always feel that a good supply chain is good for organizations and companies, [for] economists, for nation-building and making the lives of people to get better,” he explained.
One way of achieving this, he said, is having a leader with “ a strong supply chain appreciation.”
“We need [to do] capacity development and really getting the right generals who have [a] strong orientation on logistics and capacity restraints management. We [also need to] teach various organizations, particularly business [organizations] to have strong appreciation and implementation, because if the businesses are good, it [translates] to being able to supply [during] this pandemic,” Villasenor explained.
According to him, a strong appreciation of technology and e-commerce should also be present, as technology would allow businesses and organizations to do more strategic things.
