Christmas tree vendors got a jump on sales this year as buyers looking to chase away pandemic blues started the season early. But all that demand may not necessarily translate into fat profits for sellers of evergreens or the farmers who grow them.
In the face of rising B2C costs, volumes and capacity constraints, shippers have to re-engineer their fulfillment processes to accommodate last-mile parcel delivery.
The COVID-19 pandemic was supposed to put the final nail in the coffin of globalization and prompt a retreat into a new era of protectionism. Instead, some are now calling the crisis the Great Accelerator.
Kris Timmermans, senior managing director and global lead for supply chain operations with Accenture, and David Simchi-Levi, professor of engineering systems at MIT, discuss their joint effort in creating a stress test for assessing the risks to supply chains of major disruptions.