It’s a New Year, with old problems
Sitting with our immediate families we observed the passage of 2020 into 2021 this past weekend. The conversation that evening kept coming back to the arrival and availability of vaccines to combat COVID-19.
It is disappointing that in the most advanced nation on the planet, we are struggling to get the vaccine from vials into the arms of citizens. I can’t help thinking that there are supply chain issues at hand in addition to perhaps other shortcomings in the execution plan. A vaccine supply chain is similar to others and yet has its own uniqueness. It is a complex system of manufacturing, transportation, equipment, personnel, locations and processes spanning the entire set of functions that must kick in from where they are made, to the final recipients. Moreover, in the case of COVID-19 vaccines (at least the ones first out of the gate) we need a “cold chain” since they must be kept refrigerated or even a “deep freeze chain” because some may have to be stored at deep sub-freezing temperatures throughout the delivery process.
The target for January 1, 2021 was to get 20 million Americans vaccinated. We are woefully behind. Could we have done better if there was better intelligence about the need vs. existing capabilities? Could we have recognized the chinks in our supply chain armor if we had a way of knowing what was lacking? For example, could labs, hospitals and other facilities where the ultimate dispensation is done been better prepared for the specific needs of the COVID-19 vaccine? If not, could we have caught this sooner? With so many moving parts, the potential points of failure tend to be more than one. Would it not have been helpful to have some form of early warning about where we might falter? For sure, a better plan outlining who all could get the vaccine in round one would have gotten us closer to the 20 million target.
Having spent years focused on matters of operational intelligence and having studied supply chain challenges closely, I’ve been wondering about such questions. It is not just about the vaccine distribution which stands between us and many more deaths, it is also about learning what we need to do better to put in place early warning systems that can alert us of issues in a more timely manner so that the ultimate objective is not compromised. This is not a new problem; it’s merely threatening to cause us grief in a new way.
I didn’t mean to start the year off by talking about life and death matters; there’s plenty on the news and the internet. I merely wanted to get us thinking about what we need to do in order to execute better when it comes to business operations and supply chain management. I am confident that we will get through this crisis that has kept us in its grip for almost a year now. We will go on to conquer new frontiers. I hope we’ll do it all more smoothly and with less pain – we’ll need to apply the lessons learned in recent months. Let’s resolve to do just that in 2021.