Supply chains across the globe experienced fragility on an unprecedented scale due to the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. No business was able to completely evade the wrath brought in by the pandemic. Though disruptions in supply chains are inevitable, the need of the hour is to plan and tackle the challenges in an intelligent manner and to build resiliency for the future. Enterprises are now bringing in processes, people and technology together to become flexible and adapt quickly to ever-changing conditions across supply chains. In a recently concluded roundtable organised by SAP in association with BW Businessworld and CII, top leaders working in the world of supply chain management discussed several topics including the role of intelligent supply chains, increased online consumption of goods, changing consumer attitude, increasing demand from tier-II/tier-III cities, and challenges of reverse logistics.

Turbulent times can expose weaknesses in distribution chains, putting stress on chokepoints and reducing access to critical components, suppliers, and capital. The ability to respond to changes rapidly and effectively depends on a variety of assets and business capabilities: replacing or augmenting supply sources in response to partner inventory issues or trade war-induced tariffs or restrictions, and having agile manufacturing processes that reduce redundancies and streamline product inputs. Each thread of this complex web of factors that affects supply chain resilience must be examined and assessed separately to identify potential vulnerabilities and mitigate them. At the same time, most of this web simplifies down to two primary strands, common capabilities that run through every resilient business: increasing visibility and maintaining sufficient diversity in the supply chain. Capability 1--Insight Developing data capabilities and analysis tools that reach from suppliers and partners all across the value chain through to end customers, allowing companies to anticipate and prevent supply disruptions.