Over the last 40 years, says Jit Agarwal, our VP of Enterprise Products, supply chains have “become very strung out, very long, very complicated, very convoluted, and very, very diverse.” This has made them brittle, a fact that the pandemic has brutally exposed. Denis Grishin, our VP and Supply Chain Practice Leader and Agarwal’s interlocutor for this episode, adds that for the longest time, “the name of the game was productivity”—but supply chains’ efficiency “did us a disservice.” Plug in your earbuds to hear their ideas about creating more resilient supply chains today (Grishin says, for instance, that you should “try to cut out the complexity that’s not really contributive or additive to your business”). The pair toss up some agile answers to the questions of the inquiring Ken Gordon, on topics such as demand partnerships, streamlining, future-proofing teams, and forecasting (“Forecasting is ultimately an inexact science. The forecast is always wrong,” says Grishin. “The reality always is something else”). Tune in, and you’ll learn not just about where supply chains are headed—you’ll also discover Agarwal’s secret nickname! Well, sort of.
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon
