The United States Department of Commerce (USDOC) has introduced a new supply chain risk assessment tooldesigned to diagnose potential disruptions before they occur.
The tool – known as SCALE – allows the U.S. government to assess supply chain risks across the nation’s economy and then provide an in-depth diagnostic assessment of the causes of these issues in a specific sector. To do this, he focuses on three main areas: the importance of an industry to the U.S. government, the extent to which that industry might be exposed to disruption, and how difficult it is for that industry to recover from a disruption.
“Think of it as your annual physical, combined with your X-rays, your blood tests and your MRI,” Deputy Commerce Secretary Grant Harris said at the USDOC conference. top of the supply chain on September 10.
As an example, Harris highlighted how the tool would have flagged personal protective equipment (PPE) as an area of systemic risk in the lead-up to the 2020 pandemic, which could have helped avoid the national shortage of PPE that has paralyzed the American healthcare system. healthcare system as COVID-19 first spread.
SCALE is the second supply chain tool deployed by the Biden administration in the wake of the pandemic, joining the 2022 Freight Logistics Optimizations Works (FLOW) initiative. FLOW was designed collect, aggregate and anonymize information shared by ports, importers and shipping carriers, assess future demands against current capacity and ensure the smooth operation of the shipping sector in the face of possible shortages or delays.