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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 2 – The State of Supply Chain Sustainability 2023, published today, Now in its fourth year, the annual report from the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) examines how supply chain sustainability practices have evolved over a four-year period, how they are being implemented globally, and what that means for professionals, enterprises, industries, and the planet. This year’s report shows that pressure on firms to make their supply chains more sustainable.

David Correll, Principal Investigator for the State of Supply Chain Sustainability, was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal showcasing the work and findings of this year's report—namely, that pressure on firms to strengthen their supply chain sustainability efforts has been sustained and incr

It's a paradox: You won't know if or how an investment in supply chain resilience pays off until you actually have to use it—which, ideally, you won't.

The major disruptions of the last few years have made supply chain resilience top of mind of many companies. But because resilience is so hard to measure, it's very difficult to know how much to invest in it.

CTL Executive Director Chris Caplice spoke to Vox's Recode for their article "8 experts diagnose the supply chain". In his view, it was never really broken. "Supply chains just adjust, but they were hit with a global pandemic," he said. "You saw all the warts and everything, but it kept working."

Caplice went on to explain further.

In the face of supply chain disruptions, such as Covid-19, the Ukraine War, and high inflation, MIT LIFTLab and MIT Sustainable Supply Chain Lab director Josué Velázquez Martínez says that there is a silver lining: organizations are learning that supply chains have tangible vulnerabilities to focus on, and that they need to focus on building resilience.

In an article for MIT Sloan Management Review, CTL Director Yossi Sheffi writes that rising inflation and global supply chain problems raise concerns that a recession is looming.

The race to deliver a Covid-19 vaccine has been likened to a moonshot, but in several ways landing a man on the moon was easier. In his new book, A Shot in the Arm: How Science, Engineering, and Supply Chains Converged to Vaccinate the World, published today by MIT CTL Media, MIT Professor Yossi Sheffi recounts the vaccine’s extraordinary journey from scientific breakthroughs to coronavirus antidote and mass vaccination.

Yossi Sheffi talked with David Pogue for an October 11 segment on CBS Sunday Morning examining the paradox of empty store shelves, higher prices and longer wait times for good of all kinds, despite the "glut of goods" coming into the country.

"The underlying cause of all of this is actually a huge increase in demand. People did not spend during the pandemic, and then all the government help came... trillions of dollars went to households, so they ordered stuff... they ordered more and more stuff, and global markets were not ready."

MIT CTL's Jarrod Goentzel was quoted in Bloomberg Business Week

According to Yossi Sheffi, professor at MIT and director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, supply chain is typically the “asphalt of the road” —that is, when it works, there’s no need to talk about it. 

MIT SCM ‘00 grad Marc Boyle’s company, Boyle Transportation is cited in the Wall Street Journal for its role in vaccine distribution in the U.S.

“Moving vaccines and other pharmaceutical products with strict temperature requirements is a delicate business. Carriers that specialize in such shipments typically provide what is known as temperature-validated service. Sensors and other devices monitor conditions inside the trailer and record data to confirm that the temperature remains within a certain range.

The vaccination effort that has kicked off will rely on a sprawling chain of people, processes and connections that will all have to work to make the campaign successful. The mass mobilization is one of the largest in the U.S. since the country’s factories were repurposed during World War II, the WSJ’s Sarah Krouse, Jared S. Hopkins, and Anna Wilde Mathews write, and relies on factory workers, truck drivers, pilots, pharmacists and health-care workers, among others.

Pandemic plus holidays? That equals a huge increase in online shopping and about 800 million more packages to be delivered than last year. But shipping companies and merchants that aren’t Amazon aren’t handling it all that well.

Dr. Yossi Sheffi, an MIT professor who specializes in supply chain management, said reduced air travel is going to impact items imported from overseas, like iPhones and computer chips.  “I would expect problems in stuff that usually flies. Anything that is expensive and small flies,” Dr. Sheffi said.Sheffi recently published a book—”The New (Ab)Normal—which examines how COVID-19 has disrupted the global supply chain.

Ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Prof. Yossi Sheffi comments on one of the most widely discussed issues in the campaign: trade relations between the U.S. and China. He writes:

The Trump administration’s aggressive stance toward China has compounded uncertainty on U.S.-China trade relations. In considering how the presidential elections may affect the flow of international trade, companies should avoid the accepted wisdom.

In his new book The New (Ab)Normal: Reshaping Business and Supply Chain Strategy Beyond Covid-19, published today, MIT CTL Director Prof. Yossi Sheffi maps how companies grappled with the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic and how they can survive and thrive as the crisis subsides. Sheffi pays particular attention to supply chain's role in helping companies manage and recover from the pandemic.

MIT CTL Deputy Director Jim Rice wrote an article in Harvard Business Review along with Federico Caniato and Antonella Moretto of the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano.

Yossi Sheffi on China's position in the global trade ecosystem in the aftermath of the pandemic:

The innovative omni-channel supply chain models that have reshaped many parts of the retail industry continue to evolve in response to market changes. One of these changes is the increasing demand for grocery products ordered online, a trend reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic that imposed restrictions on the use of physical stores for grocery shopping.

When you think about it, the spread of COVID-19 operates a lot like a supply chain. Ken Cottrill discusses looking at the outbreak in these terms:

To stop the spread of the virus, we must ensure that its supply chain fails. We can secure failure by using disruptors to prevent deliveries of the supply chain’s deadly freight. But not disruptors such as adverse weather that derail product supply chains. These are special disruptors that include masks, quarantines, and social distancing.

MIT CTL Director Prof. Yossi Sheffi reflects on one major difficulty of virtual communication in this moment:

COVID-19’s lockdowns have required people to replace much of the in-person communication they conducted at work — as well as with customers and suppliers — with virtual meetings on platforms such as Zoom, Teams, and Hangout. When the coronavirus crisis subsides, will people return to physical meeting places or cling to the virtual equivalents they have become familiar with?