3 Emerging Supply Chain Trends with Steve Elwell

Joe Lynch and Steve Elwell discuss 3 emerging supply chain trends. Steve helps businesses manage challenges through improvements to leadership, liquidity, sales, and costs.

About Steve Elwell

Steve Elwell is the Founder of iDev Partners, which is a business consultancy focused on turnaround, growth, and Improvement. Steve brings a strategic and practical approach to the challenges of leadership and business profitability. He is an expert in the growth and turnaround of small and medium manufacturing, logistics, and technology businesses. He led the turnaround of 6 troubled companies and started 2 new businesses. He successfully recruited and led 6 sales forces, introduced dozens of new products, and entered 10 new markets. As a retained executive search consultant, he built C-suite leadership teams for clients in a variety of industries. Steve earned a BA in Economics and Management and an MBA. He lives with his family in suburban Detroit.

About iDev Partners

iDev Partners provides growth and turnaround services to owners and executives of small and medium-sized automotive, industrial, and technology businesses. Areas of focus include new market entry, new product development, sales effectiveness, partnerships and alliances, operational excellence, and financial management.

Key Takeaways: 3 Emerging Supply Chain Trends

Steve Elwell is the Founder of iDev Partners, which is a business consultancy focused on turnaround, growth, and Improvement. Steve brings a strategic and practical approach to the challenges of leadership and business profitability. In this podcast, Joe and Steve discuss 3 emerging supply chain trends.
Trend #1: China represent a higher supply chain risk
- There is significant political risk with the current Chinese government leadership.
- An older, more expensive population means China is not a low-cost country for business.
- The housing/financial issues within China threaten the country’s financial stability.
- Ongoing infrastructure and water issues has the potential to disrupt supply chains.
Trend #2: Near sourcing and shorter supply chains
- Many companies are moving to supply chain partners located in North America to reduce supply chain risk, transportation costs, transportation time, and environmental impact.
- The port congestion and challenges caused by the pandemic highlighted the problem with suppliers from Asia.
Trend #3: Better decision making enabled by end-to-end connectivity, transparency, and visibility.
- Investment in technology is enabling companies to make better decisions because they have visibility into their supply chains.
- Soon, supply chains will be connected from order-to-cash or end-to-end, which that there will be a “digital twin” that represents the physical supply chain (reality).
- Top supply chains practitioners are already using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to run millions of possible SC scenarios with the goal of reducing risk, while increasing resiliency, and profits.