According to figures issued recently by the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which monitors global weather, the first six weeks of 2014 saw extreme weather occur almost simultaneously in countries across the globe, from significant snowfall in North America to damaging storms and floods in the United Kingdom, to heat waves in Brazil, Southern Africa and Australia and even snow in Vietnam.
In many cases, the weather was unseasonable or well in excess of predictions. So, is this the new normal or simply a seasonal abnormality? The debate on why the world’s weather has become quite so volatile, and the ramifications going forward, rages on among environmentalists, academics and climate change campaigners. However the immediate and practical impact is far-reaching, including disruptions to power networks, crops and of course the global supply chain.
With the extremes of weather being experienced not just globally, but even within same geographical region, potential delays and interruptions to transportation are wide-ranging and go beyond the usual contingency plans for snow or storms in winter and high temperatures over the summer months that logistics professionals will routinely have in place. The current level of volatility is not just affecting long-distance air and ocean shipments, but localized or inter-region road, rail and ferry crossings too, creating multiple levels of complexity and increasing the risk of delays and bottlenecks significantly.
e-Commerce operations, logistics service providers (LSPs), and Freight Forwarders are all equally impacted by extreme weather scenarios. Long term or short term interruptions can lead to brand erosion or force companies to source products from secondary markets. Airport closures, port closures and/or road closures all have an impact on the movement of goods. Delays due to weather directly impact the time in transit, the cost of goods sold, and most importantly a company’s reputation.
Retailers and Manufacturers whose business are impacted by weather may be forced to look to at alternative delivery models, alternative sea ports, sea lanes and or secondary (tier 2, tier 3) carrier to complete those movements.
Read next week's blog post to hear the actions retailers, LSPs and freight forwarders can take to ensure they cope in the best possible way with so much uncertainty and keep goods on schedule while protecting margins.
The visibility and collaboration capabilities of the Kewill MOVE TM multimodal transportation platform mean that even at times of extreme weather or market volatility, our customers (and their customers) gain early insight into supply chain problems, allowing them to take alternative steps to mitigate the impact and keep shipments and schedules on track.
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The post Extreme Global Weather Set to Continue – What’s the Supply Chain Impact (Part 1)? appeared first on Kewill Corporate.