Increasing globalization means more flexibility, market independence, economic and trade freedom in terms of deciding where to produce and where to sell. In order to be able to deliver all the goods from A to B and thus also maintain our usual standard of living, enormous logistics services and trouble-free supply chains are required.
Should there be disruptions within the supply chain, these will lead to an interruption and thus to supply bottlenecks at national and international level.
Such disturbances can have different sources:
Natural disasters (e.g., volcanic eruption on Iceland in 2006. Civil and goods air traffic was interrupted for days, which led to various supply bottlenecks).
Biological – epidemics, pandemics such as Ebola or Covid 19 (closings of national borders, branches of industry, production plants that led to the interruption of entire supply chains).
Political – changes regarding various interests or trade agreements (e.g., USA vs. Europe, USA vs. China, e.g., sanctions against Nordstream 2, etc.).
Technological – human error or disruptions within the digital data transmission / use (e.g., blocking of the Suez Canal by the ship Ewer-Given, which led to delivery delays of approx. 2 weeks).
All these disturbance variables cannot be completely ruled out, but they can be avoided or mitigated in advance.
This requires a preventive approach to avoid or mitigate the possible effects.
- Possible solutions in the run-up to a project / contract award: – select several suppliers and assign them accordingly with delivery quotas.
- Choose a geographical separation of the suppliers so that local influences cannot affect the entire supply chain.
- Observation of the social and political structures within a country or region.
- Make decisions for countries that stand for the upholding of human / labor rights as well as environmental protection and sustainability.
- Avoid countries and regions in which child labor or slavery is still practiced and not punished.
Minimal attention to such influencing factors would mean that rethinking could be forced on many levels.
