The Olympics' impact on suppply chain: Were you prepared?

With the Olympic Games coming up next month in China, nearly everyone’s supply chain is starting to feel the effects. Whole cities are shutting down their plants, transportation is being restricted to get rid of the smog, and China is indicating that they will control the weather.

Basically if you have suppliers in that region you should be going to plan B. We are starting to see long delays of items going into and out of China and my suppliers are not even in the area of the games.

I’ve talked to a few fellow procurement pros and some anticipated these issues and others did not. Those who did are sleeping well. They had inventory built in advance and basically carried more inventory than what they normally did, but better that than not shipping at all. I had a few good minutes rubbing that in the face of my buddy who did not believe us when we told him. He believed that some impact would be felt, but not at this level. 

Like I said earlier, we are seeing delays in both directions and I would venture to guess that it will get worse before it gets better. We are increasing out estimated leadtime through customs from 7 to 14 days to help combat this, but I am now questioning if we need to go further. Events like this make me re-review my dual sourcing strategy.