Horizon scanning: What’s Horizon scanning?
So obsessive has the motivation of greed for profit been, that those driving this way of doing business have come up with ever more creative ways to defy the practical realities of business and production.
These have included the development of ‘Just in Time’ methodologies and ‘Lean Manufacturing’, which are heralded as brilliant ways to manage profit driven commercial business. But pay very little heed to world events or what any kind of unforeseen circumstance might have in store.
The response of different governments around the world to the Covid Pandemic, quite literally brought many parts of the global supply chain to a halt.
The massive costs and margins of this ridiculously fragile system had been dependent on every part of it continuing to work endlessly – as it was always expected to do so – with only what we would consider to be the minimum of contingencies having been planned for.
So, when a worldwide virus that inept political leaders completely overreacted to and used fear to make populations think that it was much worse than it actually is became involved, the global supply chain was exposed in a way that was rather like the first of a squillion dominoes that had been set up to knock each other down being flicked.
And so has begun a process of destruction. Beginning slowly with those dominoes falling one by one.
Adam Tugwell 