Post-disaster housing recovery reveals critical lessons for building resilient supply chains across all industries. Drawing from a 2026 roundtable that the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab convened with the National Institute of Building Sciences, this article identifies five key principles: map your system across demand, supply, and enabling environment; aggregate demand to unlock standardization and efficiency; establish consistent terminology as operational infrastructure; invest in planning and relationships before disruption strikes; and treat resilience as strategic competitive advantage rather than a cost. Whether managing pharmaceutical distribution, automotive networks, or retail fulfillment, supply chain professionals can strengthen adaptability by orchestrating cross-sector collaboration and designing systems for predictability before crisis hits. The full roundtable report that this article references is available here.
Read the full article, published in the September/October 2026 issue of Supply Chain Management Review, attached as a PDF.
