Story originally appeared in The Times/Raconteur on April 29, 2020. Excerpts from the story below. To see the full story visit Raconteur.net.

“It is the first time since the end of the Second World War that both supply and demand have been completely disrupted simultaneously,” says Uwe Weiss, executive vice president at Blue Yonder.

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The pandemic is exposing a myriad of cracks in a global system that companies have been optimising for a decade. Sustained economic growth has allowed businesses to make supply chains as lean as possible, supplying goods rapidly and cost effectively around the globe. “Rather than being lean, supply chains have accidentally become frail; they’re simply not resilient enough to react when things go wrong,” says Weiss.