New BCI Global Report: No visibility – No resilient supply chain

Only 1 out of 3 companies have the right information about their end-to-end supply chain to review and optimize their global supply chain and manufacturing footprint networks. The other 65% drive in the dark in a turbulent time with global disruptions occurring and emerging.

These are the results of a survey BCI Global conducted in co-operation with Executive Platform among 240 supply chain leaders in Europe and the US. BCI Global is a worldwide leader in supply chain and manufacturing strategies and site selection, working with 10 teams in the US, Europe and Asia.

A large majority of participants indicate they closely monitor external (i.e. tariffs) and internal developments (i.e. growth, margin) and include them in their footprint strategy (see questions 1, 3 and 4). But stress-testing the total end-to-end supply chain annually is only done by 26%.

Patrick Haex, Global Head of Supply Chain Solutions at BCI Global, comments: “Assessing internal and external factors influencing the footprint strategy is common practice. But the connection between the business strategy and supply chain strategy is loose, which is a recipe for not complying with company targets”.

Only 35% have the appropriate detailed visibility and up-to-date set of data further up and down the supply chain (see questions 9 and 10). Njin-Tsoe Chen, senior consultant at BCI Global: “The fact that only one out of 3 companies have the appropriate detailed end-to-end visibility of their supply chain, is really concerning. Missing this kind of information reduces the opportunities for a company to set up alternative adequate  supply chains. And with  more legal requirements to disclose countries of origin of components and products, as well as information on product code level regarding import duties, this lack of visibility brings you in trouble and reduces the opportunities to mitigate the impacts of import tariffs”.