Adopting a risk-tolerant approach to supply chain management

The events of 2020 – from bushfires, cyber-attacks and trade tension to the global pandemic¹ – have caused ripple effects across supply chains.

Eliminating risk is, unfortunately, not an option. However, by managing supply chain disruption your business may come out stronger on the other side. A new white paper Australia Post has co-authored with Deloitte, Supply Chain Resilience, Building confidence through a risk intelligent approach to supply chain management, shares a framework for doing so, underpinned by four pillars: visibility, flexibility, collaboration and control.

With this ‘risk intelligent’ approach and strategic improvements in key areas, you can bolster the agility and resilience of your supply chains and be better prepared for disruption in the future.

Weathering the storm

With online shopping volumes continuing to grow while COVID-safe requirements restrain capacity within distribution networks,² being agile and resilient has never been more important. Two organisations can face the same threats but experience different outcomes.¹

Resilience allows your organisation to quickly recover from threats to business continuity due to disruption. But agility allows you to quickly respond to opportunities and sudden changes in demand – which have been unpredictable during the pandemic, triggered in some cases by government policy shifts.²

The flexibility to adapt

Booktopia’s agility and resilience has helped it make the most of growth opportunities resulting from the COVID-19 lockdown in Victoria. For example, online sales in the arts and crafts, and book, categories both increased 40% in the state between June and July 2020.³

Booktopia’s Deputy CEO and CTO Wayne Baskin says the online bookseller has been operating at “what we call Christmas-peak demand since October 2019.” His teams are sending out their maximum volumes – over 30,000 units a day – from Booktopia’s distribution centre in Sydney.

At the same time, his team has had to adjust to social distancing requirements. “We’ve had to change the way we work in our distribution centre, having fewer people and keeping them further apart. Even separating shifts – end one early and start the next later – because we don’t want staff co-mingling. That makes it much harder to run over time.”

Three years ago, Booktopia had the foresight to invest in an automation project for their distribution centre which is now online. This has doubled their fulfilment capacity to more than 60,000 units a day.⁴

The project includes automated sortation, additional conveyor lines, new packing machines – and an additional 3,000sqm of adjacent facilities. All of which will reduce the pressure of managing surging volumes and restricted working conditions during the peak holiday shopping period.⁵

The four pillars of resilience

This investment in efficiency should also provide more control over the fulfilment portion of Booktopia’s supply chain process – one of the four core pillars of the resilient supply chain framework.¹

In an increasingly complex, dynamic and interconnected world, supply chain risks go beyond internal operations or functional issues to encompass the macro environment (such as geopolitical tensions or natural disasters) and extended supply chain variables. For example, being dependent on a single supplier can have ‘shock wave’ consequences if their market access is restricted.¹

To effectively manage these vulnerabilities, Deloitte recommends addressing critical capabilities across four key areas.¹