More than half of North American businesses lost more than a month of operational time over the last year as a result of supply chain disruptions.

According to a DP World survey of hundreds of cargo owners spanning C-suites and operational decision-makers, 84% of companies say that customer complaints have increased in the wake of recent disruptions, while 21% have lost contracts or business due to logistics delays. Another 40% have been hit with disruption-related costs of $1 million or more.

“Supply chain disruption is happening more frequently, from more directions, and the cost of reacting too late is growing," said DP World COO Morten Johansen. 

Businesses also expect costs to continue to climb, with 65% predicting total logistics spending to increase in the next 12 months. Of those, 78% say that they're planning to make larger investments in artificial intelligence, automation and digital logistics tools over the next three years, as part of a larger trend among supply chain managers to shift away from reactive disruption management and toward longer-term planning for resilience.

DP World separated the current state of global disruptions into two categories: Chronic and catastrophic. The former has been seen more often in so-called "high-volume" sectors such as retail, healthcare and perishables, where constant, repeated shocks have become common. To wit, retail and healthcare reported the highest incident load at 18,000 disruption events annually.

The automotive industry falls into the latter "catastrophic" category, as a sector that's been exposed to fewer overall incidents, but each individual disruption has been more expensive and difficult to recover from than the chronic shocks experienced by others. All told, the average cost per disruption for the automotive sector comes in around $1 million, as well as $13 billion yearly.

The firms that have seen the most success in reducing disruption costs have been the ones that have spread investments across a variety of nodes of their supply chains, and who have combined "foundational improvements" with digital tools. However, DP World also noted that there isn't a single "silver bullet" technology that businesses should hone in on, with the most resilient companies spreading their investments across factory logistics, inbound flows and warehousing, and then using digital tools to manage those solutions.