Supply Chain Demands
As you probably know the COVID-19 Pandemic has caused supply chain disruptions around the globe, affecting prices and availability of everything from gowns to gloves, diapers to degreasers.
Global manufacturing and logistics is an extremely complicated system, where disruptions in one place create significant downstream impacts – sometimes weeks and months later. And oftentimes what starts with a small disruption can be amplified downstream when the system is already under stress.
Think of it like driving in heavy traffic and someone hits their brakes. This causes the person behind them to brake…just a little more than the original one…then the next person, and so on. In light traffic this is no problem, but when there are lots of cars on the road, the result can be traffic completely stopped as the breaking is amplified via chain reaction until cars many minutes later are forced to come to a complete stop.
This, of course, is an oversimplification to illustrate where we find ourselves today with the supply chain woes. But while it looks like manufacturing has caught up with demand, we now have all that product flooding the logistics pipeline.
Recent news reports have focused on the inability of the west-coast ports to handle all the inbound shipping traffic, with 80-100 ships per day waiting offshore for their chance to dock and unload. The Federal Government has requested the port of Los Angeles to surge to 24/7 operations, but those containers have to go somewhere. And with big backups at major rail hubs (25-mile backup at the Joliet Intermodal Terminal at last report) and a shortage of truck drivers, the result is a gridlock causing significant supply deficits that can’t match our current demand.
What does supply chain demands have to do with cleaning supplies, you ask?
It’s all interconnected, and the products that we sell to our customers – including the raw chemicals that make up the formulations for things like our purple degreaser and all-purpose cleaner – are not immune from the disruptions to the supply chain.
But the show must go on – the show being your business operations.
As your cleaning product supplier, GoKlean tries to anticipate your needs, working with your purchasing team to anticipate when you will need products so we can plan stock levels and availability in the context of vendor backorders and shipping delays. The goal is to simplify your cleaning jobs at every turn, freeing you up to work on things that make you money and improving your team’s productivity. This is the GoKlean Simple Solution, backed by the GoKlean promise.
If you’re not currently a customer, call us today to experience the GoKlean Simple Solution for yourself and start saving time and money. Give us a call and we'll help you keep cleaning made simple.
Rich Benet
Owner, GoKlean
Article by Rich Benet
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