Supply Chain: The God’s Honest Truth About Change, Disruption, and Not Losing Your Mind

Drawing from over a decade of hands-on experience, Emery peeled back the corporate polish to reveal the raw, operational truth about supply chains—past, present, and future.

A Brief (and Brutally Honest) History of Supply Chain

Supply chains are not a modern invention. As Emery noted, traces of early supply routes date back thousands of years, long before anyone coined the term. 

By the 1800s, trade routes through rum and spices marked the early formalisation of supply networks. Fast forward to the mass production boom of the 1920s, and supply chain management became a critical, structured discipline.

Yet despite its long history, the supply chain today remains a messy, volatile ecosystem, filled with customs delays, regulatory hurdles, pricing wars, political conflicts, and ever-changing compliance demands.

Or as Emery put it bluntly: “Supply chain is supposed to be simple—moving things from here to there. In reality, it’s walking through a park full of grizzly bears.”

Volatility Is the New Normal

According to Gartner, the number of major global supply chain disruptions rose from four in 2019 to 17 in 2023. Events like shipping bottlenecks around the Cape of Good Hope or new customs regulations in Poland have made volatility an unavoidable feature of the landscape.

Stock delays, shortages of critical parts, and shipment reroutes have become everyday challenges. And yet, many organisations still fall into the trap of reactive rather than proactive risk management—spending in the wrong places, firefighting rather than forecasting.

Without a robust risk strategy, Emery warned, businesses will inevitably find themselves in a cycle of chaos.

Building a Risk Strategy: The Real Key to Supply Chain Sanity

Emery laid out a clear path to managing disruption:

• Risk Awareness: Every supply chain professional must constantly assess where vulnerabilities lie, whether from external crises or internal bottlenecks.
• Risk Prioritisation: Not all risks are equal. Critical finished goods, customer satisfaction, and compliance obligations must take precedence.
• Data-Driven Planning: Facts must lead the way. Emotional reactions are understandable but dangerous. Accurate demand planning, stock assessments, and forecast models provide the real guardrails.
• Scenario-Based Implementation: Emery shared examples of proactive measures, such as ordering £9.6 million in additional stock months ahead of the Red Sea shipping crisis to mitigate disruption.

Above all, effective risk strategies require visibility, flexibility, and the ability to act at speed.

Nearshoring: A Practical Step Forward

In response to global instability, Emery’s team at Phinia adopted nearshoring strategies and shifted manufacturing from Asia-Pacific to European countries like Romania, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey.

While slightly costlier at the production level, nearshoring delivered significant gains in shipping speed, resilience, and customer satisfaction. Shorter supply routes, fewer dependencies, and greater control over inventory led to a more agile, customer-centric model.

In today’s climate, Emery argued, these trade-offs are not luxuries but necessities for survival.

Risk Ownership: Everyone’s Responsibility

Risk management cannot live solely within compliance departments or quality assurance teams. Emery emphasised that anyone working in sales operations, aftermarket service, or supply chain roles must feel empowered to flag risks early.

By adopting a “working line back” approach and tracing problems back from the customer to the supplier, companies can pinpoint vulnerabilities before they escalate.

The logic is simple: if you can’t deliver for your customers, your competitors will. And once customer trust is broken, winning it back could take decades.

Building a Sustainable Risk Framework

Managing risk effectively means distinguishing between:

• Non-Negotiable Risks: Legal compliance, anti-bribery regulations, cybersecurity protocols, environmental standards such as CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism)
• Negotiable Risks: Operational compromises that can be adjusted or worked around without jeopardising legal standing.
• Operational Risks: Practical realities such as workforce capability, system limitations, and physical logistics challenges.

Understanding this hierarchy helps companies focus resources where they are needed most, while maintaining the flexibility to adapt quickly to changing conditions.

Movement, Footprint, and Agility: Three Supply Chain Imperatives

Drawing an analogy to golf, Emery explained that success in supply chain operations mirrors the goal of taking fewer shots: reduce unnecessary movement, minimise the energy footprint, and increase agility.

Reducing touchpoints in warehouses, optimising delivery routes, and streamlining order processes not only improves resilience but also drives significant cost savings over time.

Visibility, aided by systems integration and real-time analytics, is another vital ingredient. While Excel spreadsheets may still have their place, Emery stressed that businesses need smarter tools to handle modern complexities.

Measuring What Matters: The Cost of Doing Nothing

One of the keynote’s most powerful insights was a simple but often overlooked truth: doing nothing carries a cost.

Supply chain leaders must be able to quantify not just the ROI of new investments but also the cost of inaction. Low stock availability, for example, directly translates into lost sales and eroded customer relationships.

Rather than waiting for problems to compound, proactive investment in supply chain resilience can prevent multi-million-pound revenue losses. It’s an argument that resonates deeply with financial and executive teams alike.

Final Thoughts: Winning Through Logistics

Emery closed by referencing a famous quote: “Leaders win through logistics. Vision, yes. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time.”

Supply chain excellence is not about glamour or perfection but rather about preparedness, resilience, and smart execution. Those who master these fundamentals won’t just survive future disruptions, but better yet—thrive.