With the world witnessing the most dreadful period with the onset of the novel Coronavirus, everything had come to a standstill. Like every domain, even the supply chain department had to bear the brunt of it! With the country facing its biggest challenge in the form of lockdowns and curfews, AWL had to grapple with a lot just like every other supply chain. But the lesson has been learned and learned thoroughly even when it was in the hardest way.

In an exclusive interaction with Rahul Mehra, the CEO and Founder of AWL, he shared a few insights on the supply chain management facing unprecedented disruptions. “It was a period of extreme uncertainty and gloom. Spend under management is the key and cash being the king in the supply chain had to be preserved at all costs. Surely, it was a period of uncertain cash flow and financing was pretty much unstable.” He further adds, “it was not just the supply that was affected. This time it was the ‘demand’ to get affected. Coronavirus had significantly impacted both of them in the worst possible way.”

Even for AWL, the situation was rough, and there needed a lot to be done on the risk management side of things. But there had been a solution and the supply chain equipped itself better for the unforeseeable future. “We knew what had come but we were still not in a position to know what is coming. Is there going to be a second wave? Of course, even forecasting at this point is not a wise thing to do. So, instead of focusing on what the future has in store for us, we started addressing the situation in hand and we started working towards it positively so that we cope up with the things to come.”

With this, he mentions the risk mitigation measures that had been adopted by the entire AWL team. “Led by our healthcare logistics team working as the front-line warriors and from adopting the new protocols like remote working, using the technology, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the best way possible to equipping the front line workers with the required protective gear, we came up with ways of easing it and surviving it,” says Rahul.

According to the AWL CEO, the lessons learned from this global outbreak could be:

1. Getting everyone to the same understanding for the supply chain resilience can further assist the subsidiaries and increase the transparency in efforts.
2. Using technology efficiently to not just forecast demand but also to time it in the best way possible and to improve visibility control.

Having shared all that and geared up with a positive mindset, Rahul Mehra is hopeful that even the hopeless circumstances like this could be tackled well with a positive approach. Though loathsome, Coronavirus surely gave the supply chains an opportunity to bring a positive societal impact instead of yielding.