Discover your next big idea at PACK EXPO Las Vegas this September
Experience a breakthrough in packaging & processing and transform your business with solutions from 2,300 suppliers spanning all industries.
REGISTER NOW & SAVE

Supply Chain’s Perfect Storm

In April of 2020, during the first wave COVID-19 shutdowns, I spoke with Abe Eshkenazi, CEO, Association for Supply Chain Management, about what to expect from the supply chain.

Matt Reynolds1

Nearly two years on, supply chain problems continue, but they’re not the same as they were then. I spoke with him again at the end of January 2022 to catch us up to now and see what the future holds.

“The issues that we’re dealing with right now are unique, even compared to 2020,” Eshkenazi says. “We have a consumer base that has increased its demand for products and services like no other time in our history. It comes on the heels of a pandemic where everybody was locked down, and we saw a significant shift in the way that organizations and companies can deliver to the consumer. We’re now seeing that the consumer has higher expectations than before. And yet with e-commerce and all the challenges that we now have with warehousing, with trucking, with logistics, we’re not able to catch up to the spikes in demand that are now upon us.”

CPGs are victims of their own success. They’re now held to a practically unmeetable combination of 1.) demand for a wide variety of nearly customized products, and 2.) high expectations for how (and how quickly) these products make their way to the consumer.

“That’s the main reason we’re seeing shortages in a variety of different products and services, it’s a problem of heightened demand,” Eshkenazi says. The main reason, sure. But that’s not all.

List: Digitalization Companies From PACK EXPO
Looking for CPG-focused digital transformation solutions? Download our editor-curated list from PACK EXPO featuring top companies offering warehouse management, ERP, digital twin, and MES software with supply chain visibility and analytics capabilities—all tailored specifically for CPG operations.
Download Now
List: Digitalization Companies From PACK EXPO
Conveying Innovations Report
Editors report on distinguishing characteristics that define each new product and collected video demonstrating the equipment or materials as displayed at the show. This topical report, winnowed from nearly 300 PACK EXPO collective booth visits, represents a categorized, organized account of individual items that were selected based on whether they were deemed to be both new, and truly innovative, based on decades of combined editorial experience in experiencing and evaluating PACK EXPO products.
Take me there
Conveying Innovations Report