The 17 “rare earth” minerals that are essential to so many high-tech products today, from electric cars to magnets and military systems, aren’t literally rare, but their mining and production is.

Jeff Livingston, senior solutions consultant with QAD DynaSys, explains the importance of resilience in the supply-chain function, in times of high demand variability and uncertainty.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to severe shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) needed to protect Americans from the disease. The crisis has revealed an overreliance on imported supplies, particularly from China.

Innovative supply-chain strategies that seemed so perfectly attuned to current purchasing patterns have turned out to carry a lot more risk than their creators could ever have imagined.