拜登对美国供应链的评估激起了采购界专家的反应

Pixabay.

As the world takes in US President Joe Biden’s latestexecutive order（EO）关于目前进口的关键部件（主要是计算机芯片和药品）的国内采购，以帮助美国减少对外国供应的依赖，支出问题将目光转向了采购部门的总体思路。

行政命令（由美国总统发布联邦指令的一种手段，负责管理联邦政府的运作）旨在帮助保护美国经济，使其免受疫情期间出现的供应短缺的影响。疫情迫使汽车制造商因缺乏半导体而停产，让医护人员没有关键的个人防护设备，并对制药行业关键药物成分的可用性表示担忧。现在将开始对关键供应链进行为期100天的审查。

我们的首席研究分析师万博体育下载app最近忘记了一些想法领英，which sparked an interesting string of对话：来自采购世界的各种人对此运动的有效性的混合感。

Voices from procurement

罗伯特·汉菲尔德博士，美国北卡罗来纳州立大学普尔管理学院供应链资源合作社和美国银行大学供应链管理特聘教授，给出供应链脆弱性的现实检验，他解释说：

“为期100天的审查将遵循更长的长期审查更广泛的关键供应链，包括能源部门，个人防护装备，农产品，交通工业基础和公共卫生和生物制备工业基地。”（拜登说，这将“帮助解决我们经济的额外关键部门的供应链中的漏洞，以便美国人民准备抵御任何危机并依靠自己。”）

手菲尔德提出了声明“揭示了供应链的深厚Naiveté，这在两位政治家和公众都很常见。大多数个人对全球供应链设计的复杂性的理解有限，很少有意识到重新支配（虽然没有直接在EO中引用）在全球交易的背景下，所有制造业都返回美国的翻盖（或经过行政订单）是不可能的......“在这里阅读他的全部想法.

彼得史密斯— author of糟糕的购买前CIPS总裁、前欧洲区总经理兼英国政府一次性采购顾问在与我们交谈时也表达了类似的观点：

“Of course it is good to see political leaders thinking about issues of supply chain risk and resilience. The idea that a country should be more self-sufficient when it comes to critical goods or materials — or foodstuffs, or military equipment — seems sensible. But in practical terms, there are real issues and barriers. For instance, we have started manufacturing more PPE in the UK following the shortages of last year. Some local firms have invested in additional capacity. But now that the market has returned to more normal pricing, will hospitals be prepared to pay a premium for UK-made masks and gowns? How long before the newspapers start complaining about a waste of taxpayers’ money on pricy ‘made in the UK’ goods? And in areas such as semiconductors, how do you persuade business to make major investments in new capacity, unless you guarantee funding or a future stream of orders, which again is likely to be very expensive compared to global market pricing. I do believe governments have to think carefully about these issues, and some change is needed, but it is naïve to think there are simple solutions or that any country can quickly make all its critical supply chains risk-free.”

克里斯蒂娜·苏库波娃博士，国防和安全创新中心和航空航天和防御实践总监在I3CAS的主席补充说，“这在国防领域没有新的东西。例如，在战争的情况下，一个国家不想依赖别人。“

“这是一个国家安全问题，”她说出了很重要的事情。“一方面，你想成为自我可持续性的。另一方面，您无法拥有另一个国家为您提供武器，无线电等，世界上没有一个国家，这实际上是在军事装备方面的自给自足。这更像是谁购买谁？我相信谁？“

“这是它确实成为一个政治问题而不是经济的问题，”她回应了供应和国家安全的连续性永远不会成为党派辩论的论点。

“这就是为什么这些供应可能非常昂贵，因为你想从你的盟友而不是敌人那里购买。当涉及到某些技术时，你需要确切地知道它们里面有什么以及组件来自哪里。你不能冒险向比你更了解它们的国家开放你的系统。因此，这是一个非常有问题的平衡，在许多情况下，它归结为并非总是与价格有关的政治决定。”

”这个问题,从我所看到的,是我s no way we can control visibility to the very last component in our sophisticated and complex systems. When we buy a computer, we know the chips are made in China — that’s just how it is and has been. If you put a computer chip in a weapons system that can kill people, you want to have full visibility and control of it — that’s a question of possibility. This dilemma has come up before in the security arena but ends up with people shrugging their shoulders because the Chinese are the main manufacturers that can make chips at a certain price. Even with home-grown technology in the shape of start-ups, the military is reluctant to buy emerging tech from them, because they can’t be sure the start-up will survive the next five years, and they need their systems to be maintained for longer than that. So from a安全观点,it makes perfect sense to have chips made in the US, only then will you know whether there are any insecurities.”

Many thanks to our contributors for these insightful comments, and we’ll be continuing our ‘voices’ theme in a second post when we’ll be asking other experts for their views on: how these executive orders tend to be implemented; what shape the review might take; who is responsible for it; the impact on agencies; who will undertake assessments; whether there is a resilience framework used in federal government, and more. We welcome your comments too of course.