Big Ideas in Supply Chain
Turning supply chain disruption on its head
Episode Summary
Supply chain innovator Angel Mendez and Chief Strategy Officer at Kinaxis, Dr. Anne Robinson, cohost a new video podcast series. Join them in their first episode as they discuss valuable supply chain lessons they learned from the pandemic.
Episode Notes
In this series debut, Anne and Angel share their thoughts about the supply chain renaissance and pandemic disruptions. Specifically, the lessons that we can learn from living through such a disruptive period and what supply chain practitioners can do to prepare for a tumultuous future. Join them for a discussion about the importance of organizing lessons learnt from the supply chain triage, emphasizing innovation and delivering results.
Intro to guest
- Angel Mendez is a supply chain expert, transformational leader, and visionary with nearly 40 years of experience. He is joining Dr. Anne Robinson, Chief Strategy Officer at Kinaxis, as a guest host in a new series of our Big Ideas in Supply Chain video podcasts. Watch now as they discuss the importance of lessons learned from the pandemic, embracing disruption and creating innovation for the future.
Summary points
- As part of the new Big Ideas in Supply Chain podcast series, Angel Mendez is joining Dr. Anne Robinson as a new cohost. Angel is a supply chain expert, transformational leader and visionary with nearly 40 years of experience. Angel is passionate about bringing big ideas forward and sharing his expertise.
- The COVID pandemic created significant disruption in supply chain, which continues to be felt today. Angel believes that there are a lot of valuable lessons that supply chains can take away from managing mass disruption, and it’s important to collect and codify what was learned during this time to prepare for an uncertain future. [1:20]
- Many supply chain practitioners are wondering what can be done to ensure the effects of disruption aren’t felt to this level of magnitude again. Angel argues that this is an unfair question due to the current unstable environmental and economic landscape. [3:20]
- It’s important to take advantage of the crisis and disruption we faced so we can become stronger and benefit from it at the end of the day – so how do we embrace it? Angel suggests that one solution is for the vendor community and practitioner community to come together to figure out how to harness change, and digital transformation can assist with this collaboration. Another suggestion is to continue accelerating innovation because we need more agile and adaptable solutions for an uncertain future. [8:00]
- Angel states that a supply chain renaissance began in the early 2010s thanks to the explosion of cloud services and the ability to be API driven, which spurred a period of innovation. [8:00] He mentions that the pandemic forced this innovation to pause, but now, to counter the effects of this disruption, innovation has started to accelerate once again to make sure we’re prepared for a tumultuous future. Anne and Angel believe that a great way for organizations to encourage this is to create a formal innovation team. [10:00]
Speaker Bios