Procurement in Crisis: What We Learned About Ourselves During the COVID Pandemic

“Like many of you, I watched the biggest supply chain spotlight in the history of our profession and read many drive-by press clippings around the failures of the Government to respond . . . What do you think the Government (Fed, States, etc.) need to change to be better prepared to respond to a future event? What tools from our profession should be applied?” – Brian, Watercooler, Procurement Foundry

The above discussion around the Procurement Foundry watercooler is fascinating on many levels.

To start, we have not yet emerged on the other side of this pandemic, which means there may still be a lesson or two for all of us to learn.

That said, there are several examples of breakdowns in our supply chains that challenge our pre-pandemic way of doing things.

From an overreliance on low-cost country sourcing and putting all our proverbial eggs in a single source basket to both the unexpected and what should have been expected disruptions, let’s look back on a year to remember.

There is No Place Like Home

At the height of the pandemic, when desperately needed PPE supplies were hard to come by, governments worldwide talked about taking over private sector supply chains. The U.S. even went so far as to dust off and invoke the Defence Production Act to ensure “the proper nationwide priorities and allocation of all health and medical resources.”

Looking beyond the immediate crisis, some governments considered creating legislation to repatriate critical supply chains to their home soil to avoid a repeat of similar supply problems in the future.

For some, the thought of government stepping into private supply chain business sent a collective shudder across our industry. Let’s face it; almost anyone could quickly point to past public sector procurement missteps as a “people living in glass houses” example of why government involvement is not a good idea. For those familiar with Utt’s 1995 Heritage Foundation paper advocating the privatization of the GSA and the New Public Management (NPM) craze of the late nineties, private taking over public procurement makes far more sense (no, not really).

Of course, examples such as Peloton’s measures to address shipping delays by flying product from overseas plants and moving a part of their manufacturing capacity back home to U.S. soil suggest that the repatriation idea has merit regardless of who is driving it.

It Takes a Crisis

A year ago, the following LinkedIn post asking the question “Can procurement collaborate and innovate outside of a crisis?” had close to 93,000 views stimulating an energized debate.

The post suggests that a crisis is what procurement needs to elevate its game to the next level. In other words, it is during a difficult period that our industry steps up to the plate to deliver what is needed in nothing short of amazing fashion. However, on the other side of a catastrophic event, our industry seems to fall into a kind of complacency that mutes our sustainable creativity and limits our effectiveness.

The above post’s reference to a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report on Sustainable Apparel Coalition offering “actionable guidance to avoid backsliding on progress in #sustainability in Fashion” speaks to the latter point.

Given these two examples, the best way to avoid press clippings failures in the future is to recognize our potential and operate in a perpetual state of readiness.