Experiencing and handling volatility and complexity | Bangkok Post: business

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Amid the terrible difficulties continuing across the Bangkok area, it is timely to continue the discussion about volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) in supply chain management. We sincerely do not mean to be anything but constructive, but obviously there are many in business and government who are wishing that they had more seriously considered the worst possible scenarios when conducting their risk assessments of day-to-day operations as well as supply chain and distribution designs. Not to mention, disaster recovery planning, if any.

Readers will recall that in recent months we referenced a posting from one of our favourite supply chain oriented blogs, "The 21st Century Supply Chain" from Kinaxis. Their thought-leader, Trevor Miles, shared content from a presentation by Jane Barrett at this year's Gartner Supply Chain conference in which she used VUCA to describe the current business environment and its effect on the supply and value chains, saying that companies are thinking about how they cope with this volatility and uncertainty in the supply chain so that they can respond profitably.

At the time, though, the 'V' and 'U' had more to do with economic and market driven issues, not so much the physical debacle that has now been encountered across the kingdom.