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Rakesh Pabbi - Senior Partner
Viewing entries tagged
Supply chain
The supply chain landscape plays a key role in facilitating the growth and diversification of Middle East economies, supporting trade, consumption of goods, international expansion, and more. The sector is also constantly evolving – experts from ASCELA outline 7 priorities that should be on the agenda of every supply chain executive.
UK-based supply chain and logistics consultancy SCALA has expanded its footprint to the US. The firm has appointed industry veteran Wolf Liebchen to lead the new venture.
Global procurement and supply chain provider GEP has expanded its presence in the Middle East with the launch of a new office in Abu Dhabi.
A new IBM (NYSE: IBM) Institute for Business Value (IBV) study "Own Your Transformation" unveils how Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) are navigating significant supply chain challenges brought on by a global COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, climate change and geopolitical events, and how they plan to future-proof their supply chains.
Europe’s largest economy is particularly vulnerable to shortages of key parts and raw materials because of its dependence on exports.
FRANKFURT — In Germany, where one in four jobs depends on exports, the crisis gumming up the world’s supply chains is weighing heavily on the economy, which is Europe’s largest and a linchpin to global commerce.
Recent surveys and data point to a sharp slowdown of the German manufacturing powerhouse, and economists have begun to predict a “bottleneck recession.”
Almost everything that German factories need to operate is in short supply, not just computer chips but also plywood, copper, aluminium, plastics and raw materials like cobalt, lithium, nickel and graphite, which are crucial ingredients of electric car batteries.
The auto industry has been hit the hardest. Opel, a unit of Stellantis, the company that owns Jeep and Fiat, said in September that it would shut down a factory in Eisenach until next year because of a shortage of semiconductors. The plant’s 1,300 workers will be furloughed.
More than 40 percent of German companies said they had lost sales because of supply problems in an August survey by the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce. Europewide, exports would have been 7 percent higher in the first six months of the year if not for supply bottlenecks, according to the European Central Bank.
While every economy in the world is suffering from shortages, Germany is particularly sensitive because of its dependence on manufacturing and trade. Nearly half of Germany’s economic output depends on exports of cars, machine tools and other goods, compared with only 12 percent in the United States.
Because Germany is a nation of factories, “the impact is dramatic,” said Oliver Knapp, a senior partner at Roland Berger, a Munich-based consultancy.
The country is also facing a period of political uncertainty. Elections last month left no party with a clear majority, and there is a risk that whatever coalition government emerges will lack enough cohesion to act decisively.
Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young is continuing to invest heavily in blockchain, investing $100 million into engineering and developing distributed ledger technologies for a range of enterprise applications.
Global consultancy Kearney has announced a collaboration with cognitive automation company Aera Technology to improve enterprise agility and resiliency for companies worldwide.
