Supply chain professionals pessimistic about UK prospects
Rising costs, material shortages and pressure on budgets are dragging down UK supply chains says survey
According to supply chain software provider Coupa Software, supply chain disorder will continue to impact the UK for some time to come, with 91% of supply chain leaders seeing the situation deteriorating or stagnating.
This is due to a number of factors centred on geopolitical uncertainties, material shortages, and higher transport, production and raw material costs.
Thirty-four percent of survey respondents expect continued shortages of goods and critical parts in during the next 6-12 months. Fuel, computer chips and food are predicted to be the most affected items. For the latter, UK supermarkets recently put out warnings that they would need to limit some fresh food items due to procurement issues.
Top issues companies expect to face were identified as transportation and shipping costs (15%), managing shrinking budgets (14%) and dealing with internal shortages (10%).
Despite recognising the extent of problems, less than a quarter had implemented a target task force to work on contingency plans for future disruption and 15% said they had no contingency plans in this area at all.
Although 78% of UK supply chain leaders say that investment will be key to building more agile, resilient supply chains, only 22% of UK supply leaders in the process of digitising their supply chains. This leaves the country is falling behind France (36%), Germany (30%) and the USA (34%) in this area.
Thirty-eight percent say they are planning to digitise in the next six months and 18% are talking about doing it in the next year.