What does a resilient, 21st century supply chain look like? How do companies respond and manage the complexities and challenges of climate change, pandemics, and disruptions?

The research goal: Our goal is to identify management practices that make supply chains more efficient or resilient and to quantify the implications for the company’s bottom line. Our survey will quantify how close firms are from the frontier along key dimensions of the supply chain: organization, sourcing, manufacturing, logistics/fulfillment, transparency and resiliency, customs and tax, and digital. We are interested in measuring practices that improve resilience to the challenges of the 21st century: climate change, pandemics, trade disruptions, e-commerce, and sustainability. Our ultimate aim is to understand what a strong supply chain team looks like so that best practices can be quantified and leveraged to improve the resilience of the global economy.

The ask: We are asking for your support in completing our survey. The survey should take no longer than thirty minutes, and will ask you questions about the supply-chain practices at your company.

The reward. We will prepare a confidential report for your firm that quantifies your own performance relative to i) firms of similar size, ii) the industry average. From this report, your company will have evidence on where your supply chain practice stands relative to the competition, as well as which practices at your firm are most critical for strengthening your supply chain.

Data security: We have taken the following steps to ensure the confidentiality and security of the survey response. Responses will be securely stored. No individual company data points will be revealed in any publications. For instance, our analysis might conclude that firms with larger supply- chain teams are more profitable, but will not reveal details about your firm’s specific operations. These data security and privacy procedures have been approved by Institutional Review Boards at MIT and Yale.