In today’s volatile world, manufacturers must ensure their supply chains are both secure and resilient. In this Supply Chain Byte, Lisa Anderson explains how it starts upstream with your suppliers—who are no longer just vendors, but partners in stability and success.
Understanding the critical importance of supply chain security and resiliency is gaining momentum in boardrooms across the world. For example, JP Morgan Chase just announced a $1.5 trillion dollar investment in critical industries, focused on security and resiliency. They will facilitate, finance and invest in these areas over the next 10 years. There are four key areas:
- Supply chain and advanced manufacturing: this area includes critical minerals and rare earths, pharmaceutical precursors, and robotics. Since China just cut off the U.S. off from rare earth minerals for the second time this year, and these rare earths are required in almost every critical industry, business leaders are seeing the vital importance of securing end-to-end supply chains.
- Aerospace & defense: JP Morgan is focused on advanced technologies in this key sector including defense tech, autonomous systems, drones next gen connectivity and secure communications. Refer to our recent Supply Chain Bytes on these hot topics.
- Energy independence: Energy powers manufacturing, mining and industrials as well as artificial intelligence. JP Morgan plans to invest in battery storage, grid resilience, and nuclear energy and more.
- Frontier & strategic technologies: Artificial intelligence and advanced technologies are core to future success. JP Morgan mentioned AI, cyber and quantum computing. To learn more about strategies to proactively address these topics, download our eBook, AI and Advanced Technologies: How AI Powers Smart Supply Chains and Smarter Decisions.
Business leaders must focus on ensuring security and creating resiliency. Looking for low-cost vendors will not suffice. Instead, you must look for strategic partners and think 5 steps ahead of the competition. Assess your end-to-end supply chain, step up on your cyber security, reshore and/or expand domestic manufacturing for critical items, and deploy AI and advanced technologies. You must play chess, not checkers to success in tomorrow’s supply chain.
If you are interested in reading more on this topic:
Only as Strong as Your Weakest Link in the Supply Chain: The Rare Earth Threat