Supply Chain Ecosystems in Challenging Times!!

 Hi all, I am Priyadarsini currently pursuing 2nd year MBA at Amrita School of Business, Coimbatore.   Here's my new blog post!!

In crisis situations, single customer-supplier relationships are often not adequately resilient, so supply chain leaders must overcome the obstacle by adding more partners and creating an ecosystem.

The ultimate test of the resilience of a supply chain network is major disruption, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Not all disruptions are unplanned, however. Many CEOs are planning to offer their products and services with a new value proposition, and they expect their companies to need new capabilities to support these new products and services.

By creating an ecosystem with a variety of partners, supply chain leaders will gain the latest capabilities their CEOs demand and boost the resilience of their network. Every ecosystem has a different look. In order to fill capacity gaps, some companies turn to academia and start-ups, others try to engage end-users and customers in new ways of value exchange, such as re-commerce and rental.

Ecosystem Enables Circular Economy

Through techniques ranging from recycling to maintenance, the circular economy model seeks to maintain asset value. Adopting a model of circular economy will also improve the security of raw materials as the company decreases the dependence on the supply of raw material and increases the use of recycled materials.

Material and product recovery is focused on an integrated ecosystem of partner organizations. Consumers can be a valuable addition to the ecosystem,  Some businesses encourage end-users to return their used goods , for example by switching to as a service business models that dramatically improve content reclamation rates

Ecosystem requires trust

They will face challenges as supply chains begin their journey towards taking full advantage of their ecosystem. There must, for instance, be certain standards about data and data quality. Only if there is mutual trust between the partners can those challenges be solved. 

It is important to build a collaborative and trusting culture for supply chain leaders where ecosystem partners are able to work together and share information across the network. This will be the case if only members agree on mutual qualitative and quantitative standards.