By Jan. 30, when the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, to be a global health emergency, much of Hubei Province, where Wuhan is located, was already under government-ordered quarantine. Over the next few weeks, similar measures were imposed across a wide swath of mainland China. As concern rose about the coronavirus’ impact on human health—at the time, China had reported approximately 10,000 confirmed cases and 200 deaths—it was also clear that the spread of disease, and the lockdown measures necessary to control it, would have potentially drastic effects on many companies’ supply chains, particularly in the chemical industry, which has historically been dependent upon China, according to the professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. In a survey conducted April 22 through May 19 by the American Chemistry Council, nearly three-quarters of surveyed companies indicated that the pandemic had resulted in lost sales in the United  States. Nearly 60 percent said they had experienced transportation or distribution challenges, and more than half said their supply chains had been disrupted. As the virus spread around the world, the crisis brought supply chain issues into sharp relief. Since at least the turn of the century, increasing globalization had raised concerns that supply chains had become so lean and efficient that they were vulnerable to disruptions. Companies implemented a range of protective measures that had consequences for the transport and delivery of goods and supplies, highlighting the need for organizations to revisit their risk management practices and business continuity plans—areas that typically fall within the responsibilities of product stewardship professionals. ATTAINING RESILIENCE In 2003, soon after the SARS epidemic, the Cranfield University School of Management released the report “Creating Resilient Supply Chains: A Practical Guide.” The report discussed trends that many observers considered to be contributors to supply chain vulnerabilities, including rapid growth of global sourcing and offshoring, reduction of the supplier base, consolidation of industry, and the centralization of distribution facilities. In the right circumstances, these features allowed supply chains to function efficiently, but they were also fragile: a problem at one supplier could break the chain and cause serious issues both upstream and downstream. To manage risks, the idea of supply chain “resilience” has gained currency. Resilience, or the ability of a system to return to its desired state after a disturbance, is a topic of great interest at the Oxfordshire-based National Chemical Emergency Centre. NCEC originated as a governmental agency to provide emergency services whenever there was a chemical incident in the United Kingdom. Privatized along with similar agencies in the 1980s, NCEC is now part of Ricardo, a global automotive engineering and sustainability company. Today, NCEC’s business is international: its 600 clients include about half of the world’s top 100 chemical manufacturers throughout the chemical supply chain. In August, Craig Thomson, NCEC’s associate director of business development, presented a webinar through the Product Stewardship Society on chemical supply chains. The webinar occurred too late for this issue of The Synergist, but among the topics Thomson planned to discuss was supply chain resilience, he said in a video chat this summer. For Thomson, supply chain resilience is “the ability for an organization to understand the risks that face them within the supply chain to the extent that they can then make the right and sensible decisions about what mitigation activities they should put in place.” “That’s not necessarily to say that you must mitigate all these risks,” Thomson says. “It would be great if organizations had billions of dollars to spend on risk mitigation, but it’s about making the sensible decisions about what’s the most impactful risk and then making the investments in the right area.” Thomson agrees with the view that years of emphasis on efficiency have left supply chains vulnerable to disruptions. In normal times, the most disruptive events NCEC addresses are transportation issues: roadway collisions, overturned tankers, derailed trains. While these events are rare, other types of transportation issues are relatively common, often involving loading and offloading. Chemical releases caused by unsecured drums rolling around in a truck or forklifts puncturing barrels are the kinds of things that most often prompt calls to NCEC’s emergency hotline. Thomson explains how the novel coronavirus’s spread around the world has raised the stakes for these incidents and affected companies’ ability to address them. “The new problem the pandemic has introduced is the availability of people to help in many ways,” he says. A significant incident may cause a company to activate its business continuity or crisis management plans, but these plans might not account for reduced staffing brought about by the pandemic. “When organizations are looking at staffing levels, they’re not considering necessarily what these people are doing with a view of the wider emergency response chain,” Thomson says. Employee layoffs often lead to delayed communication about incidents. “[Communication is] still happening, but it’s slower, disjointed. More time [is spent] trying to find the right people, because people are being furloughed . . . and organizations aren’t necessarily thinking through that link, how that all ties together, and therefore putting the right alternative arrangements in place.” Because protecting the health and safety of workers is among a business’s most pressing concerns during the pandemic, Thomson cautions against losing sight of the big picture. “The fact that we’re in the middle of a crisis doesn’t mean that any of your other risks go away,” he says. “If you’ve got spill response teams in your warehouses, are they still operating? Do you still have 24 hours of operation covered from that level of capacity? And then when it goes down into the supply chain, what are you actually doing from an emergency response perspective? If you’re using a provider, what are their mitigation steps? How are they managing the crisis? And if you have less staff in house who can help during an incident, are you using the right provider that can actually provide the right level of support so you don’t need to get involved?”