For supply chain executives, the list of potential disruptions keeps getting longer, whether it be the recent congestion at Asian ports, potential low water levels at the Panama Canal and this year’s ongoing bottlenecks at the Strait of Hormuz.
Those disruptions are changing how companies think about their logistics networks and what they expect from the third-party logistics providers (3PLs) managing them.
Nearly three in four (74 percent of) shippers are experiencing major or severe ongoing impacts from global conflicts and geopolitical disruptions, according to the 2027 Third-Party Logistics Study released Tuesday.
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Transportation capacity and transit times were the most widely affected areas, cited by 73 percent of shippers surveyed.
“The preponderance of what we’ve been facing is a global reset in the geopolitical environment, supplemented by natural phenomena and, on top of that, a large driving force of global economic reset,” said Mark Baxa, president and CEO of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). “It has created a state of high-speed disruption and a need for high-speed, knowledgeable repair in the supply chain.”
Shippers are responding by changing where and how they source, according to the survey, which was developed by NTT DATA, Penske Logistics and the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute with support from the CSCMP. Seventy-four percent said they are diversifying suppliers or sourcing regions, while 73 percent are increasing safety stock or inventory buffers.
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