COVID-19, China, and the Tangled Web of Globalized Supply Chains

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel famously said about the Great Recession when he served as the White House Chief of Staff under President Obama. “And what I mean by that — it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before,” he added. The sentiment is equally relevant today, as companies reconsider their supply-chain strategies in the wake of COVID-19. That conversation is especially pointed among medical device manufacturers. Image: Denisismagilov/Adobe Stock The severe shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, and other medical devices revealed by the pandemic has led a number of companies to reevaluate their supply chains. Deciding where to invest manufacturing is a complex exercise, Matteo Mancini, Senior Partner at McKinsey in Singapore told Ruth Strachan of Verdict Medical Devices. Several elements need to be taken into account, “from safety and the resilience of the supply chain to overhead costs,” Mancini is quoted as saying in Strachan’s article, “COVID-19 forces a rethink of global supply chains.” If [Covid-19] takes some time to be resolved, some companies will take the opportunity to review the supply chain and make it ‘more local’ where demand is [strong] enough in their loca...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Tags: Design News Source Type: news