Due to Covid-19, Companies Invest in SCM

Due to the border shutdown and other preventive measures of Covid-19, many harbors and airlines have frequently been closed. Freight handling delays combined with people trying to buy up products had caused a shortage of necessities. In order to gain the supply chain’s resilience back, many companies are trying to remake Supply Chain Management (SCM) strategies.

Apple used to adopt the Just-In-Time inventory management tactic, which aims to minimize the amount of inventory on hand to meet demand. Now, however, they are diversifying supplying countries rather than focusing only on China. IBM is also adopting a new strategy, called Rapid Supplier Contact (RSC), to combine new supply companies with ordering companies.

As an increasing number of companies care and focus more on SCM, the demand for SCM consultants is rapidly growing internationally. According to SCM Map Europe, 53 percent of SCM consultant firms in Europe have been hired in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.

MBA schools are also focusing on the importance of SCM. Srikant Datar, the dean of Harvard Business School, acknowledged how companies had taken the logistics for granted before the pandemic started. Smeal College of Business in Pennsylvania now offers a new SCM course to its master’s level students.

Following the trend in the market and academia, an increasing number of people are looking for MBA degrees in SCM. According to Rudolf Leuschner, an associate professor of supply chain management at Rutgers Business School, about 10-20 percent more Rutgers MBA students enrolled in SCM courses than they had done before the pandemic started. He also believes that the demand by corporations will continue. “The lack of suitable literature has been a known topic for decades, but it wasn’t yet bad enough to cause large-scale delays as they do now,” he says.

Growing of the SCM market is expected to continue after Covid-19. According to Marketsandmarkets, a market research company, SCM market size is expected to grow almost twice by 2026.

 

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