Worst thing We Can Do is Bloat Supply Chains Even Further, Says Robert Sutton

We should not build in the lessons learnt from the pandemic into our everyday behaviours today, said Robert Sutton, Sr VP, Freezone, Cargo and Logistics, Abu Dhabi Airports, while speaking at TLME's Future of Logistics Conference Part 3 held recently in Dubai.

Mr Sutton was responding to conference moderator Lars Jensen's question on what lessons we have learned from the pandemic experience.

"The worst thing we can do is go back and bloat the supply chains even further," emphasised Mr Sutton. We don’t really need to diversify our supply chains as much as identify what our points of failure were during the pandemic and try to rectify those processes in the planning cycle, he added.

Using the right information to rectify previous errors is key to meeting future challenges and that can be done by cleverly by applying the right technologies to analyse past data and "stress test" future decisions.

The pandemic experience has created an inbuilt bias in supply chain players to make quick decisions and be ready for the next crisis at any cost. Mr Sutton said that we need to start using technologies like AI in our planning and forecasting to remove this bias and create leaner and more resilient supply chains.

Read More: The Pandemic has Brought Logistics Ops Sharply into Public Focus, Sue Donoghue