The global supply chain includes the buying and selling disciplines, but the selling aspect has gone through dramatic recent changes, as the failed strategies that led to the pandemic-induced supply chain crisis have been revisited. At their annual sellers conference, Supply Chain by Amazon in September 2023, Amazon announced a broad initiative providing their organizational sellers with enhanced techniques to more efficiently transport products directly from production to customers:
“Supply Chain by Amazon enables sellers to benefit from Amazon’s advanced logistics, fulfillment, and transportation capabilities to keep products in stock, ship faster and more reliably, and significantly lower costs.”
Rickards (2022) outlined how energy issues and inflation have made the selling component to be more unpredictable and volatile than ever in the post-pandemic global supply chain. In the current global supply chain environment, where port delays are no longer in the headlines but instead labor disputes have arisen in sectors such as the American automobile industry and European public transportation, Amazon is attempting to innovate by simplifying its supply chains. Similarly, American automakers Ford and General Motors have recently vertically integrated their semiconductor chip production strategies by producing in-house, to avoid bottlenecks that idled factories in the Spring of 2022.
The current environment within the selling area in global supply chains was discussed by three speakers who explained the requisite skillsets needed by modern organizations. These organizational leaders were Purdue alumni in various majors including the PPI, Krannert, and Health and Human Services. In a world where supply chains are less resilient than ever before, Purdue University’s Supply Chain and Sales Engineering Technology degree aims to meet this requisite market skillset.
