This scenario was created in 2006 by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics as part of a simulation exercise that involved executives from a real-life company who took on the roles of Vaxxon’s fictitious emergency response team.
It is based on an actual outbreak of Asian bird flu virus, that at the time was as terrifying as COVID-19 is today. This page is a reference page for the April 2020 article, COVID-19: Will We Learn the Lessons or Make the Same Mistakes?
We revisited the 2006 simulation — which was used as a powerful teaching aid — to underline that while crises of this type are by no means new, companies often fail to heed the lessons they provide. MIT CTL research indicates that some enterprises do adopt meaningful practices in the aftermath of a large-scale disruption — but most don’t take the opportunity to build supply chain resilience.
Will the same thing happen after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides?