White House Turns to Military for New Supply Chain Mission
Source：Bloomberg
From：Taiwan Trade Center New York
Update Time：2020/06/03
Supply chains are a fickle beast with a propensity to become unwieldy, presenting industry and government leaders a sobering test of their leadership skills. German military command learned as much in World War II during Operation Barbarossa in western Russia, as did the Romans in trying to sustain their expansive empire.
Today, the supply chain is being tested by a global health crisis. The massive effort to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic and aid Americans sickened by the disease has made supply-chain management a top national security concern of President Donald Trump.
“The supply chain is everywhere, it’s like The Matrix,” said Todd McAllister, director of global supply chain and logistics at National Defense University’s Eisenhower School. “If you’re a global company, you’ve got to prioritize for sure and you have to come to an understanding that there’s a certain component of supply chain art.”
The Department of Defense is planning to invest $133 million to increase domestic production of N95 masks by more than 39 million over the next three months, DoD spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Andrews said in an April 21 statement. 3M Co., Owens & Minor Inc. and Honeywell International Inc. received contracts under the long standing Defense Production Act.
“This will help ensure our government has the industrial capacity to meet the nation’s needs,” Ellen Lord, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, said in a briefing last week. “The objective is to eliminate reliance on the foreign supply chain.”
Source : https://www.bloomberg.com