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This article was originally published on 5 May 2020 on the website of the Asian Development Bank.
The pandemic has highlighted the shortcomings of the globalized supply chain model.
The emergency created by COVID-19 has stimulated innovation, creativity and novel ways of structuring tasks, organizations, and systems. In the midst of this worldwide crisis, it is hard to assess what temporary measures will become more permanent — or will morph into something else.
But we need to consider what might come next, when the light at the end of the tunnel becomes an open sky. As our eyes adjust, we may find ourselves somewhere vaguely familiar, but at the same time, distinctly different than what we knew only months ago.
Let’s start with supply chains, which have been seriously rattled during the pandemic. In the first months of the year, governments adopted a flurry of restrictive measures to curtail the spread of COVID-19. Demand plummeted and economies contracted as nonessential businesses were closed, travel bans imposed, and cross-border movement curtailed.
The result was a severe disruption of the networks between many companies and their suppliers. Nowhere was this more visible than in the markets for essential medical and health-related goods…
