Discussion1:

Covid-19 created the bitter impact on the society and forced many companies to completely shut down the offices and other corporate houses which not only hits the business financial operations of the business but also critically damaged the complete infrastructure. Covid-19 has already exposed many vulnerabilities which critically hits the business in number of ways and forced the companies to rethink on their global; business strategies. Organizations are still suffering to resume their normal business operations and continue to operate the business under the different platform (Haishun & Chuanling, 2020).

Covid-19 forcing the organizations to work on their existing business strategies and transform the global supply management chain specially for those companies who are relying on the China to fulfil their basic requirements for the finished goods and services. Covid-19 put major disruptions in the global supply chain and hits the day to day operations very badly. Almost all the areas critically impacted because of the Covid-19 and looking for the better ways so that they can come back on the normal stage (Haishun & Chuanling, 2020).

Still experts are unable to work on the right vaccination which can fight against the Covid-19 and protect the people from this disease. Many small scale industries completely shut down their offices because of Covid-19 and waiting for the day when this virus can completely disappear. Companies who are heavily relying on the China facing the serious trouble to manage their supply chain operations and looking for the possible ways so that they can at least minimise the financial risk they are facing (Hopman, Allegranzi & Mehtar, 2020).

References

Haishun, D. & Chuanling, S. (2020). COVID-19: Challenges and Perspectives for the Pulp and Paper Industry Worldwide. BioResources, 15(3), 4638–4641.

Hopman, J., Allegranzi, B., & Mehtar, S. (2020). Managing COVID-19 in low-and middle-income countries. JAMA.

Discussion 2:

The spread of COVID-19 is considered as the global pandemic which has disrupted the economy of every country. The pandemic started in China and slowly made its way to the other countries. China has shut the whole country to prevent the spreading of the disease but this negatively affected the supply chain. China is the hub for manufacturing goods which plays a major part in the supply chain and when it was in lockdown other countries have negatively affected. China ended lockdown after three months and started manufacturing, this gap has resulted in price increases and shortage of goods. Most of the medical supplies come from china and in this situation, all the countries will face difficulties in getting medical supplies. This pandemic has shown the weakness of the current supply chain management. There is an immediate need for every country to reassess their supply chain strategy and come up with new innovative techniques to stabilize the supply chain in the times of uncertainty (Lee J, Wright J, March 2020).

China is acting as the central point for the supply chain worldwide. The centralization of the supply chain is prone to a single point of failure. The supply chain has to be decentralized so that in the times of uncertainty the supply chain will not be crippled. Due to the lockdown in china, there has been the scarcity of the medical kits which affected the health care industry of many countries (Ivanov & Dolgui 2020). The pandemic has resulted in the decreased supply which negatively the health, finance and technology industries (Karabag 2020). The article by Ivanov focused on the changes in the logistic applications optimises the supply chain and the other article explains the changes needed in the technology which can make the supply chain efficient.

I believe that the decentralizing the supply of the goods is important. The organizations must constantly monitor the situations and must have the preparedness plan in times of uncertainty. The communication channels must be optimized so that organization can constantly monitor the situation. The logistic applications must be improved so that the supply chain can be efficiently monitored.

I have a business of my own and 100% of the products I sell are sourced from China. I have made necessary changes in the sourcing strategy where instead of sourcing everything from China I have decided to distribute my supply chain. Currently, I am working on sourcing the products from different countries like India, Vietnam, South Korea and also buy products from USA.

Reference:

Lee J, Wright J,. (March 2020). COVID-19 and shattered supply chains. Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/report/covid-19-supply-chains

Karabag, S. F. (2020). An unprecedented global crisis! the global, regional, national, political, economic and commercial impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Journal of Applied Economics and Business Research, 10(1), 1-6.

Ivanov, D. (2020). Predicting the impacts of epidemic outbreaks on global supply chains: A simulation-based analysis on the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2) case. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 136, 101922. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc71475… [22/05/2020]