By Gareth Vaughan
New Zealand's supply chains are in "a serious, if not critical condition," requiring holistic systems thinking and a long-term focus, investment and government support to become stronger and more resilient, says self proclaimed supply chain tragic Dave Christie.
Christie, who has worked, or does work, in supply chain roles for the army, PwC, the Warehouse, Fonterra, Coda Group, Tainui Group Holdings developing the Ruakura Superhub, and Synergic Technologies, spoke to interest.co.nz in the latest episode of our Of Interest podcast about NZ's supply chain issues and the Ministry of Transport's recently released Aotearoa New Zealand Freight and Supply Chain Strategy. Christie was part of an industry reference group for the development of this strategy.
He says supply chain problems caused by the Covid-19 pandemic brought "an invisible part of business and society" out into the light, and highlighted to the Government how vulnerable NZ is to global disruptions.
"The concern I have is we feel we've come out of Covid and people are kind of going' the supply chain's resolved.' ... What happened with Covid is the tide went out and we saw these rocks, they were exposed and we started to deal with those, but we dealt with them in what I would say were very unsophisticated ways. Now the tide's rising and everyone's forgotten about the rocks below the water," Christie says.
"if I was a doctor who was diagnosing the New Zealand supply chain as my patient I would have to say the diagnosis is that we are in serious, if not critical, condition."
"And perhaps staying with that human analogy and referring it to the supply chain, the heart is the beating production sector of New Zealand. And while that's performing well, I think it's actually unproductive and we've seen this multiple times through the Productivity Commission's reports. So our heart isn't beating as efficiently as it can. The arteries and veins are the networks that flow products and goods around, not just [around] New Zealand but the globe, [and] they are constrained, we've got cholesterol in there and high blood pressure," says Christie.
"We've got parts of our network where the blood doesn't flow correctly, so that's not getting to the extremities well, our nervous system, we're actually deaf, dumb and blind, we don't know where the problems are and where they're coming from so we just get smacked in the face and we're probably suffering from early onset dementia. We don't actually have the cognitive ability to learn from our mistakes and improve, so we continually make the same mistakes."
However, he says all is not lost.
"We know lots of patients who are serious and in a critical condition. [But] if they get the right care they can come out the other end better, stronger and more resilient. And I honestly believe that's potentially the future for us in New Zealand and our supply chain."
Given the investment required, 30-year timeframes, regulatory settings and 360 degree thinking needed, there's a role for government to play, Christie adds.
In the podcast he also talks about the need to change NZ's port structure, why NZ should have reserve stocks of critical imports, whether NZ should have a national shipping line, the role for coastal shipping and rail, why supply chain improvements really matter to small businesses, the push to decarbonise, and more.
"If we want to make a change we're going to have some tough conversations. We're going to have to change some of the settings," Christie says, adding this should always be for the greater good.
Following on from the podcast discussion about reserve stocks, note the Fuel Industry (Improving Fuel Resilience) Amendment Act received royal assent on August 30. It includes minimum stockholding obligations.
*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.
18 Comments
Come on PDK, he made a point of how it was taking circa 12,000 tonnes of CO2 out, he spoke well to the increased efficiencies of rail... Post fossil energy we will have moved to solid state batteries and be the better for it although the final hurdles of industrial science on that and the algae based replication of fossil fuel properties remain to be finalised.
Wrong on every count.
We are still ADDING CO2 - if just less, still an issue, just takes longer per total milestone passed.
Rail yes, better than road, but end-link distribution problems - but we are consuming orders-of-magnitude too much planet, per time. So by the time we pull our heads in to that level, not much transport demand at all.
EROEI, efficiencies and entropy are all real, hopium is not. I have lived with - and moved with, the evolving technologies. Have built E-bikes, built our off-grid system, have evolved from flooded L/A to Li Fe Po4 --- but every physical technology has a limit, and batteries weigh their full weight when 'empty' (discharged). Burned hydrocarbons do not.
Algae can be traced - like firewood - to solar energy input; essentially we will be down to solar acres. Which are ALREADY in contention, both globally and locally.
Get-out-of-jail-free cards are rare in physics/chemistry/biology.
No - i did my apprenticeship as the last of that echelon (of expertise) headed for retirement. And we have almost no foundries left. It won't be steam.
But bio-diesel to run the existing locos, tractors - is possible.
Won't be plentiful, won't be cheap, but possible...
A lot of maps of planet Earth, or the world if you prefer, don't even have NZ on them. They tend to be northern hemisphere generated, of which there are many, where NZ is [the last stop before Antarctica] bottom right if you're lucky. Our isolation is a big part of our unproductiveness. The other being too many lazy people working for various forms of degenerate governance structures, of which we have far too many.
Haven't recent studies identified the outdated technology that businesses continue to use as the main cause of NZ's poor productivity?
I work for a successful NZ owned company that uses an enterprise system from the 1980s and most examples of Microsoft Office are Office 2010.
I also see major inefficiencies in the company - and in others we deal with. The assertion that private businesse are so much more efficient than the government sector is bollocks.
Despite your inefficiencies I would bet you are way more efficient than Govt agencies - Health is only just phasing out fax machines
and having worked in other countries there are plenty of enterprises offshore that are even worse than here - but the "winners" do stand out - here and abroad
Yes , and its still a mess. Every job i go on things are delayed , or the wrong product sent . Not sure what it is , Part of me thinks the covid excuse seems to be ingrained now , there is no urgency or expectation to get things right , almost a expectation that there will be delays and mistakes.
Try reading this:
https://books.google.co.nz/books/about/The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societie…
Cause/causal...
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