The chaos at ports continues with no end. A troubling realization is sinking into the mind: The effects of the " Great Supply Chain Distortion" are already being felt throughout the country. For example, 30% of baby formula brands may be out of stock soon. This could cause retailers to limit the number of containers they can sell and leave parents concerned that their children won't get enough food. This issue covers all industries and has an impact on automotive, healthcare IT, hospitality, manufacturing, apparel, as well as other areas.

Over the last few years, companies across industries from retail to manufacturing have started using digital twins to weather the worst of the world's ongoing supply-chain disruptions. "We wanted to step back and look at a country's whole health care network," says Heidi Albert, head of FIND South Africa. "That's what led us to supply-chain thinking." FIND (Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics) is a nonprofit based in Switzerland. Testing is one of the weakest links in global health care, says Albert: "Our aim is to make sure that everyone who needs a test has access to one."

If you want to see the fragility of the incredibly complex supply chains which link the world, the ships bobbing off the California coast are pretty indicative. Ships and their shipping containers, carrying everything from Halloween decorations to toys to furniture to electronics, are stuck at loggerheads in Long Beach and other ports. Supply chains, already complex, have been broken by an invisible force: SARS-CoV-2. "There have been events over the years that have impacted supply chains, but the scale at which COVID-19 affected global supply chains and the domino effect of lockdowns was second to none," Vikram Murthi, vice president of industry strategy at Llamasoft, which designs supply chains, told industry publication Supply Chain Magazine. COVID-19 has put incredible strain on the world's supply chains. Future lockdowns and challenges are sure to arise, Murthi says, putting the onus on businesses to shore up their supply chains and figuring out how to respond to threats as quickly as possible.

JDA software (a leading supply chain software company) has formed a Data Science Lab dedicated to the promise and power of Machine Learning. I spoke with Marie-Claude Cote Head Data Scientist at JDA. She described the lab as a group of data science PhD's and practitioners partnered with supply chain domain experts. Cote cited several examples of where JDA labs has successfully applied or is looking to apply machine learning to a Supply Chain business problem. Identify a problem, decide on an approach, execute a Proof of Concept and when you see that it works you scale the solution to work with all your data at production levels.