Back To Contingency Planning

This past Tuesday, we released the latest edition of PurchTips entitled "The Next Purchasing Crisis & Contingency Plans." We watch the statistics of readership activity closely and, unfortunately, the readership on this article was not as high as we would have liked.

That concerns me.

Not because I feel that every one of my purchasing articles deserves to be read. Rather, because the threat of pandemic influenza on the supply chain is very real. My gut feel that purchasing professionals aren't concerned about this just might be right.

Did the "sky is falling" preparation for Y2K make us too skeptical about threats to our business?

Did all of the contingency planning we did for Y2K make us feel that the time spent on such planning was wasted?

Believe me, I hope that pandemic influenza never materializes to the point some are expecting. I hope that, in retrospect, we'll someday reflect that all contingency planning done in mid-2006 was a waste of time.

But what if the sky really is falling, so to speak, and some of us have no contingency plans at all?

Who would you rather be: the purchasing manager that had a contingency plan or the purchasing manager who didn't?

I almost feel that it is our duty to the health of the global economy to have a contingency plan for pandemic influenza. If no one does, the economy may take a hit that will take years, if not a decade or more to recover from. If we all do, the impact will be easier to recover from, at least economically.

Respectfully,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
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