Source: MIL-OSI Submissions
Source: University of Auckland
Improving our supply chains should be a top priority as massive disruptions continue to be felt, says University of Auckland Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management Tava Olsen.
“It’s dangerous to assume supply chains will always work,” she says. “We need to know the basic fundamentals and to plan for the future, including for what we would do if our borders closed.”
Olsen says that while it’s great that the Government is currently working to develop the country’s first freight and supply chain strategy, the current plan has a number of flaws.
Led by the Ministry of Transport, the New Zealand freight and supply chain strategy seeks to make a national-level strategic plan for the coming decades.
Submissions on the Ministry’s issues paper, which details the current situation, challenges, and a variety of solutions, are due to be published in the next few days.
Olsen says her feedback speaks to the need for not just a single national strategy, but rather, multiple strategies.
“It’s good that the Government is starting to think about this, but I’m not sure they’re thinking enough about it. For example, the issues paper frequently references ‘our supply chain’, but we don’t have one supply chain – we have many.
“Indeed, learning how to target the right supply chain strategy for a given product is ‘Supply Chain 101’. You can’t talk about having a national supply chain strategy – you actually need different strategies depending on what you’re exporting.”
