Inflation Busting Strategies

In this episode of Interlinks my colleagues from the SAC Supply Chain Special Interest Group and I discuss some inflation busting strategies that businesses can undertake quickly and effectively to work through current challenges while staying on track for the longer-term future.

This conversation arose after I was struck recently while listening to the Irish economist, David McWilliams, on his own podcast, when he said something along the lines of that the bottlenecks and queues that we have been seeing at airports around Europe this summer are a physical manifestation of inflation.

In essence, he was saying that when demand outstrips capacity like this, we get shortages, bottlenecks, falling productivity and rising prices - in effect, the queues are, as McWilliams suggested, the physical manifestation of inflation.

Consequently, looking at things from a logistics operations point of view, as we would as supply chain professionals, I figured that looking for opportunities to remove bottlenecks and improve productivity is going to be a great way for companies to combat and beat inflation over time.

From my own consultancy work with clients across manufacturing, distribution and logistics services, I know that I have yet to meet a company that couldn’t identify in half an hour myriad opportunities to unblock bottlenecks and improve productivity in their processes and operations.

I figured also that those companies that could do this more successfully than their competitors at a time of high inflation have a great opportunity to gain two types of advantage. On the one hand, if prices are rising in their sector they may opt to rise prices also and increase their margin or, on the other hand, they may aim to keep their prices more competitive and gain market share or indeed a bit of both.

Therefore, for those companies that understand the concept in physical and operational terms, rather than some abstract and mysterious force from without – this bout of inflation might in reality be a golden opportunity.

Discussing this topic with me on this episode are my colleagues from the Supply Chain Special Interest Group of the Society for the Advancement of Consulting Lisa Anderson, President of LMA Consulting in Los Angeles in California and Antonio Zrilic, president of Logiko Consulting in Zagreb, Croatia.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.