A new IDC study sponsored by Kinaxis® Inc. (TSX:KXS) has revealed a slow progress in making supply chains more flexible and resilient while also highlighting optimism towards supply chain orchestration tools as a key enabler for the future, despite being one of the biggest lessons from the pandemic era.
According to research, less than one-fifth (17%) of global supply chain leaders say their companies can respond to disruptions within 24 hours. Highlighting their widespread frustration, a staggering two-thirds (67%) of respondents admit they are not “very satisfied” with their response time.
The comprehensive survey of 1,800 supply chain decision-makers from around the world exposes the harsh reality that most are struggling to keep their operations agile and adaptable amid an onslaught of disruptions from geopolitical conflicts, natural disasters, and other volatility.
While the average crisis response time is a troubling five days, the survey shows performance varies across industries. In the Oil and Gas sector, for example, 28% of respondents say they can mount a response within a day, compared to 15% in life sciences and 14% in aerospace.
“It’s increasingly evident that supply chains have immense influence over the success or failure of businesses. The statistic revealing that 83% of supply chains are unable to adapt to disruptions within a 24-hour timeframe highlights the urgent need for increasing resilience and managing risk management across all industries especially in Asia,” said Phillip Teschemacher, Asia Pacific (APAC) President at Kinaxis.
“In this landscape, there lies a significant opportunity for improvement. Companies can work on improving visibility, increasing collaboration and advancing towards orchestration to enable Chief Supply Chain Officers to automate decision-making across the entire enterprise.”
Although respondents in all regions are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with their business’ ability to withstand and respond to supply chain shocks, they remain optimistic about technology’s potential to turn the tide, with 97% saying better orchestration tools would have a modest (44%) or significant (53%) impact on supply chain performance.
Other key findings include:
- 42% of consumer product respondents rated their supply chain orchestration as mature, the highest among all verticals
- 25% of respondents plan to move to new technologies in the next year to improve resilience
- 33% want supply chain orchestration platforms that offer AI/genAI capabilities
- 63% view their supply chain as some form of competitive advantage over the next 12 months, but it drops to 48% across the next 1-3 years
- 37% said the biggest roadblock to adopting a supply chain orchestration application was not finding the right vendor solution
- Industrial respondents rate their resiliency highest (47%), while retail (29%) and aerospace (27%) rate themselves lowest.
For more information on Kinaxis’ supply chain management solutions, visit Kinaxis.com.
