4 week logger lead time

COVID had a huge impact on the global supply chain.

First, it affected every country in the world.  So 94% of Fortune 1,000 companies were reporting supply chain disruption.

The issue was a shortage of labour brought about by illness, lockdowns and quarantine.  This in turn led to a shortage of components.  And this shortage went right to the root of supply chains.  So it wasn’t just chips but silicon wafers, and in that case the world woke up to its dependence on a limited number of suppliers and people finally noticed that the Taiwanese company TSMC had >50% market share.  It wasn’t just plastics but polymers.  And the further back in the supply chain the issue, the longer it would take to work its way through and back to normality.  This affected supply.  Lead times that had been measured in single digit weeks were suddenly at >52 weeks.

The other important factor to understand is that demand bounced back quickly.  Setting this against constrained supply is what pushed prices up.

Because of the nature of a pandemic, it was impossible to have been prepared in a cost-effective way that would have ensured that there was no impact.

And the impact has been: increased costs, increased lead times, and increased uncertainty.  Businesses have been out of production; production dates have been moving unexpectedly; and prices have increased.

There is evidence that the global supply chain is righting itself.  Lead times have improved, costs are off their peak.  But neither lead times nor costs are back to where they were pre-COVID yet.

So for i2O to get its lead times back to pre-COVID levels, we have had to increase resilience by increasing inventory levels including finished goods stock in-territory, and we have continued to seek production efficiencies to off-set the cost increases as much as we can.

In 3 months’ time, we aim to have APV lead times back at pre-COVID levels too.

Because water companies’ issues never went away.  Indeed they were exacerbated in many cases by the change in demand that has come about from people working from home a lot more of the time.

We’re ready to assist our customers with their ongoing need to manage their distribution networks more effectively: find and fix leaks more quickly, reduce the level of leakage, reduce the likelihood of bursts and extend asset life, and meet the needs of their customers.