Supply Chain Resilience in the Face of Disruption: A Strategic Approach for Retail and CPG Leaders
You can’t escape the next supply chain disruption—but you can outmaneuver it.
For retail and CPG leaders, the real challenge isn’t whether trade policy, tariff uncertainty, freight volatility, or inflation will strike again—it’s whether your organization is ready when it does.
Today’s market demands more than reactive problem-solving. It requires supply chain resilience —the ability to anticipate disruptions, absorb shocks, and respond with speed and confidence.
So the question becomes:
How resilient is your supply chain—and how prepared is your organization to act when it matters most?
The Challenge: Disruption Without Warning
Retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies are especially susceptible to disruptions that can ripple through global supply chains. Tariffs, regulatory changes, shortages of raw materials, environmental disasters, limited and costly shipping container capacity, and factory closures can all drive up costs and cause significant delays.
Even companies with mitigation plans in place often find that events unfold faster than their existing response capabilities can manage. Teams across the enterprise are left reacting, scrambling to update forecasts, shift orders, and manage downstream impacts.
These dynamics highlight the need for supply chains that are not only efficient but also agile, scenario-tested, and well-governed.
A Structured Response: Parker Avery’s Supply Chain Resilience Framework
We assist retail and CPG organizations in developing practical, executive-ready frameworks that enhance sourcing strategy, planning discipline, and operational responsiveness. Additionally, we outline pragmatic, near-term initiatives to address current challenges.
Here’s how we assist clients in responding confidently to disruption and strengthen supply chain resilience:
The Key: Cross-Functional Supply Chain Resilience by Design
True supply chain resilience doesn’t exist in a vacuum. While the framework starts with sourcing and supply chain analysis, its success relies on strong collaboration across merchandising, planning, finance, and operations.
Merchants should be empowered to reassess assortments and hold vendors accountable. Finance teams need to evaluate the trade-offs between cost, risk, and margin in rapidly changing situations. Planners must adjust forecasting and inventory logic to reflect new realities. Additionally, all teams should operate with shared visibility and a unified response model.
Disruption reveals—and often amplifies—organizational silos. That’s why our supply chain resilience framework is designed to dismantle these silos, enhancing alignment and execution across teams. The result is quicker decisions, increased transparency in accountability, and greater agility in the face of uncertainty.
Resilience isn’t dependent on a single team; it’s a capability that spans the entire enterprise.
The Outcome: Readiness With Direction
Organizations that adopt this framework gain more than contingency plans—they build enterprise-wide confidence, shared accountability, and operational readiness to face future disruptions with control and clarity.
By working cross-functionally, companies strengthen their ability to act—not just react—across sourcing, merchandising, planning, and finance. With scenario models, governance tools, and a prioritized roadmap in place, teams move forward with aligned priorities and focused execution.
Recently, a major retail brand used this supply chain resilience framework to:
- Assess sourcing alternatives across Asia and Latin America
- Identify SKU-level exposure to high-risk supply lines
- Refine assortment strategy and planning metrics in partnership with merchants
- Present actionable scenario options to executive stakeholders
The result wasn’t a drastic supply chain overhaul—it was a deliberate, cross-functional path forward grounded in real-time insights and organizational alignment.
Final Thought: Prepare With Purpose
We can’t predict the next supply chain disruption, but we can prepare for it. Resilient organizations don’t chase headlines; they invest in flexibility, process discipline, a cross-functional approach, and the tools to manage uncertainty with composure.
We welcome the opportunity to discuss how your team can transform volatility into strategy.
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