Christian Pedersen, head of ocean product and revenue management at Maersk, discusses the uncertainty created by trade tensions between the U.S. and its global partners.
With U.S. labor markets tightening and the persistent need for supply chains to operate at lower costs, supply chain executives will need to address serious capability challenges.
While Chinese and American officials enter heated trade negotiations this week, companies that have built the technology industry’s global supply chain aren’t waiting to see how the talks turn out.
Business theorists have been talking up the concept of supply chain as a “competitive weapon” for so many years that if it were really happening, they’d have a well-stocked armory by now.
A 2014 Deloitte survey found that 69 percent of chief procurement officers saw cost reduction as their main priority over the following 12 months. In 2018, the same survey showed that the number had jumped to 78 percent.
Amazon’s announcement registered loudly in the halls of its competitors: e-commerce companies and old-line retailers that will now have to start investing just as furiously to keep up.
Imagine yourself at the head of a company that’s on the brink of dizzying growth — a 50-fold increase in employees, and 300 times revenues — within the next three years. Would you be excited or scared?
