When COVID-19 first entered our lives, it's probably fair to say that most of us thought it was going to be a flash in the pan and didn't assign it the seriousness it deserved.

However, when it was officially labelled a pandemic and the reality of the situation became impossible to deny, industries all over the world found themselves faced with a steep learning curve as they scrambled to adjust to operating within an unprecedented global crisis.

Now things are somewhat returning to normality, it seems a suitable time to look back on how supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic transformed the medical logistics industry - and how managing our reactions evolved during that period.

Crisis Evolution

For what we are about to discuss, we have decided to coin a term - Crisis Evolution - to describe the way a situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic forces people and businesses to change in order to survive. Adaptability is at the core of Darwin's theory, so it seems an appropriate application of the term.

The onset of the pandemic had an almost instantaneous impact on supply chains. As more and more countries enacted lockdown restrictions on their citizens, freight companies, ports, couriers, warehouses, factories, and every other stakeholder in the supply chain system found themselves either running on a skeleton crew or shutting down entirely. Combine this with the added difficulty in crossing borders (not to mention the ongoing issues related to Brexit for those brands relying on goods passing through the UK) and you have a perfect storm of supply chain disruption.

A rough timeline of salient supply chain events is as follows:

• Start of the pandemic: Chinese factory shutdowns create ripples and uncertainty
• Spring 2020: Lockdowns in the United States and Europe added to product shortages
• Summer 2020: Following the reopening of economies, disruptions became idiosyncratic.
• Fall 2020: Constraints in logistics networks created additional pain points
• Winter 2020-Present: Logistics bottlenecks and product shortages continue as manufacturing tries to catch up. Sporadic lockdowns across the globe cause further disruptions as do global staff shortages.

"Supply chain disruptions have been ever-present since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they've been largely idiosyncratic, impacting different firms at different times for different reasons," reports The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. "Indeed, one of the earliest ways in which the US economy was impacted by the coronavirus was via disrupted supply chains because of factory shutdowns in Wuhan, China."

Making matters worse is the fact the medical logistics industry specifically needed to make sure critical equipment such as PPE and respirators was getting to assisted living centers and hospitals - something made significantly more difficult by the supply chain crisis.

Innovation

We talk about innovation a lot in these articles, but it really does lie at the core of Crisis Evolution - and specifically the way we as an industry managed our reactions to the disruptions described above.

We saw medical logistics firms quickly and efficiently identifying alternative suppliers - often with a focus on those within our own borders which had been largely ignored due to our overreliance on cheaper goods from the now closed-off China. In fact, this could arguably be one of the more positive outcomes from this crisis as it could - and should - give companies in our space pause to reconsider from where we source critical components and other products.

The cracks in just-in-time supply chains have been writ large and it could potentially be beneficial to reconsider investment in homegrown manufacturing to help avoid these issues in the future.

We also saw digital transformation accelerated. As companies needed to do more with fewer people, digital technology was used to plug the gap. Inventory management, online ordering, and even warehousing had the potential to be completely or partially automated, enabling businesses to continue while allowing for a depleted workforce and social distancing. Of course, many brands were already ahead of the game when it came to digital transformation and got to enjoy the benefits of that early adoption with a reduced need for crisis evolution.

Writing at the end of 2020, Supply Chain Dive said, "Those manufacturers that have already implemented digital supply chain technologies will be reaping significant rewards now, in terms of the ability to foresee issues with their supply chain that has enabled them to switch their suppliers quickly. A positive outcome of this pandemic is that it has forced all manufacturers, distributors and retailers to accelerate their move to the next level of digital transformation."

Final Thoughts

There's an accepted truism that technology often leaps forward during a war as countries pour resources into development to gain an upper hand. The same is clearly true of the way people and brands are forced to evolve during a crisis.

The evolution of the medical supply chain is set to be a hot topic at LogiMed 2022, taking place in March at the Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego, CA.