The new global supply chain

We have been talking about the global supply chain for at least a decade. Ten years ago we didn’t really know what it would look like but now we know more. Even though we are only in the very beginning of the age we are entering, the world of globalization. It is an exciting new universe we are about to enter and we know very little about it. Already today we move goods in totally different ways, according to other trade patterns and with much higher speed and predictability than ever before. And this is just the warm-up. We are starting to see the new global supply chain. We are learning through academic studies like the EU Cassandra project and many other similar academic research studies, how the global supply chain function and how it evolves over time.  We see new global value chains in almost every sector, where goods for different reasons are manufactured in many places, assembled in many places – and moved back and forward around the world before ending up in global markets and later our stores. I am in personally involved in three different projects – in different parts of the world – that is about designing and testing new superhighways entirely changing the way we operate today in Customs and Trade. This is not science fiction, but already existing. An artist called James Herbin once said that, ‘the future is so bright that I gotta where shades’. I genuinely believe that we the next ten years will totally re-design the way we do business. The next time period will give us more changes and opportunities for change – than the last hundred years did.

Are you ready for the future? I am. Let it come.