Resilience > Efficiency

For the longest time, I thought efficiency was the ultimate goal in supply chains.

Cheaper suppliers.
Faster deliveries.
Minimal inventory.
Tighter schedules.

Basically — do more with less.

That’s how most of us first learn it. In slides. In exams. In neat little formulas that make everything look controllable.

But then you start looking at real supply chains.

And suddenly, “efficient” doesn’t always look smart.

Sometimes it looks… fragile.

A single supplier delay. A sudden spike in demand. A port closure. One small disruption, and suddenly the whole system wobbles.

That’s the problem: efficiency as we learn it assumes stability. Stable demand. Stable suppliers. Stable transport. Stable timelines.

Reality? Chaos.

Customers panic-buy. Governments change rules overnight. Factories face labor shortages. Weather disrupts routes.

Even small decisions ripple through the chain in ways that spreadsheets can’t predict.

COVID didn’t create these issues. It just made the cracks visible.

Companies didn’t fail because they were careless. Many failed because they were too optimized for a world that rarely behaves predictably.

Take Toyota during the 2011 Japan earthquake: their just-in-time system was so lean that a single supplier’s disruption halted production lines for weeks.

Or look at Zara during the 2020 COVID wave: the brand’s highly efficient European distribution network couldn’t adapt fast enough to sudden lockdowns and store closures, delaying shipments and creating stockouts.

Even Apple felt tremors early in the pandemic: their reliance on a few key suppliers in China made iPhone and MacBook production temporarily bottlenecked, despite their highly optimized global supply chain.

Many of these companies weren’t reckless. They were brilliant. But brilliance alone can’t predict chaos. Too much efficiency without contingency turned strengths into vulnerabilities.

That’s where “planning for the unpredictable” comes in as an intentional design.

Extra time in schedules.
Backup suppliers ready to step in.
Safety stock waiting quietly in warehouses.
Alternative shipping routes pre-mapped.

Things that look “inefficient” until the moment they save your business.

Efficiency still matters. Absolutely. But it’s no longer enough. You can’t just remove all redundancy and call it optimized. You need a step above:

• Identify what cannot fail, and protect it.
• Build in buffers that let you respond to chaos.
• Treat inventory not as cost, but as insurance.
• Maintain multiple suppliers for critical components.
• Plan routes and timelines with alternatives baked in.

Efficiency is about speed.
Planning for unpredictability is about survival.

The shift in thinking is subtle but huge. Instead of asking: “How can we cut more?”
You start asking: “What happens if this goes wrong?” It’s all about Supply Chain Risk Management.

Once you see supply chains this way, you realize something crucial:

“A supply chain that looks perfect when everything goes right isn’t impressive. The impressive one is the system that still works when nothing goes according to plan.”