Automotive supply chains are particularly complex, usually involving thousands of parts coming from numerous players across many different countries. If something goes wrong at a single point in the chain, it can have a cascading—and potentially disastrous—effect on the whole project. It’s hard enough to balance inventory with demand in the most stable of environments, but there’s more volatility than ever post COVID. Black swan events like the pandemic, the Suez Canal blockage, and the Baltimore bridge collapse can have a huge impact on players across the supply chain. How can a company anticipate and prepare for the unexpected?
For supply chain managers, a new type of artificial intelligence (AI) simulation tool is helping to tackle some of the biggest pain points and provide an element of operational robustness. “Post COVID, we find ourselves in a world with much more uncertainty,” says Michel Morvan, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of supply chain software vendor Cosmo Tech. “Companies are seeking greater visibility into the future. Simply looking at the past and using that to plan is not good enough, as we are in a new world now.”
