Ensuring Business Continuity While Focusing on Accelerating Automation
In the face of current risks, business will focus on supply chain resiliency, accelerating automation, and increased investments in telecommunications and renewable energy.
Q2 2020
The current environment is teaching us that the need to ensure business continuity in the face of exceptional risks will be driving many supply chain location decisions in the future. More localized supply chains will be a way for companies to increase resilience and minimize disruptions as the probability for exceptional events of a global impact increases. This will generate increased activity from corporations seeking to re-shore, move, or establish new operations closer to their markets. Also, the need to make supply chains more resilient, will push corporations to require suppliers to be closer to their operations. This may increase the number of facilities that will be needed, as it may not be feasible any longer, from a business continuity standpoint, to supply several locations from one centralized facility.
It may not be feasible any longer, from a business continuity standpoint, to supply several locations from one centralized facility. I also think that corporations will most likely be more focused on accelerating their automation processes to minimize the dependence of production operations on labor force. The same will happen in terms of automated supply chains. I think that changes we saw coming eventually, in terms of automation, are going to be accelerated. The need for corporations to minimize risks in the face of exceptional events, and also to become much more efficient, will drive automation more rapidly.
This will also drive the need for increased investments in telecommunications infrastructure that can support a faster pace of automation from corporations. And increased investments in renewable energy infrastructure will also be critical to support robustly automated operations.
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Catalina Valencia, Principal, Terrafinder Consulting, LLC
A native of Cali, Colombia, Catalina Valencia brings over 19 years of professional experience on different facets of economic development. From site selection and business attraction, retention, and expansion, to exports promotion, Valencia offers a comprehensive perspective to economic development. She has sat at both sides of the table — as an economic developer, working through the challenges and opportunities of a community to attract, grow, and expand local businesses — in order to increase capital investment, jobs, and wages — and as a site selector, understanding the needs of corporations looking for the optimal location for their next facility, and evaluating communities around different geographies. On her path, Valencia has had the fortune of working on projects for an array of industries — agribusiness, petrochemical and chemical, consumer products/paper products, metallurgical,composites for aerospace, etc. — and learning about the key drivers in their location decision process.
