"Toward Efficient Pandemic Supply Chain Readiness and Response"

Benoit Montreuil, Coca-Cola Material Handling & Distribution Chair and Professor and Co-Director Supply Chain & Logistics Institute, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Moderator: Daniel Studdard, American Planning Association, Georgia Chapter

In this presentation, Dr. Montreuil will emphasize the impactful interplay between supply chains and pandemics, across the world and in each locality. The impact of collectively improving pandemic supply chain readiness and response in each of the five world states - healthy, outbreak, epidemics, pandemics, and recovery - will be highlighted.

The focus will be on critical and essential supply chains to demonstrate the capital importance of supply chains in fighting and surviving a pandemics, as revealed by the covid19 crisis.

• Critical supply chains support the fight against the pandemic disease by supporting the booming demand for testing kits, masks, respirators, etc., to hospitals and health centers.
• Essential supply chains provide the food, health products and goods necessary to ensure survival, quality of life and recovery capability of pandemic-affected populations and economies, notably subject to distancing and containment measures.

Key avenues for collectively and comprehensively enabling effective and efficient pandemic supply chain readiness and response in each of the world states will be presented. These avenues combine common-sense pragmatic practices to leading-edge concepts and technologies, notably based on Artificial Intelligence and the Physical Internet. They notably enable:

• Critical and essential supply chain visibility and predictability;
• Smart fair decisions relative to critical and essential product allocation, deployment, and transportation;
• Keeping a healthy and efficient supply chain workforce;
• Repurposing supply chains and facilities to provide boost in critical and essential product availability;
• Vector-free logistics eliminating disease propagation through goods and food production, packaging, distribution and delivery.

The presentation results from the interdisciplinary collaboration of 28 professors from Georgia Tech Supply Chain & Logistics Institute.

Access webinar here.