The global coronavirus outbreak in recent months has severely disrupted sipply chains for most companies, in many ways: some saw big spikes in demand, others large declines, while the state of suppliers was a major concerned for many, as first factories in China and then the US closed for many weeks.

The consultants at McKinsey recently surveyed supply chain executives as to what steps they took during the crisis to get better management and control of their supply chains in the face of these huge challenges:

Building supply chain conttrol towers, or what McKinsey calls nerve centers, tops the list, deployed or leveraged by 49% of respondents.

Not far behind as daily "war room" meetings to get updated data and make decisions, at 47%.

Also scoring high were actions to potentially expand suppliers and logistics services providers.

McKinsey cite a couple of examples, such as a leading automotive manufacturer       thatdecided to move away from a sole-supplier partnership for one of its critical components, while another respondent reported that it is engaging with vendors much earlier to ensure supply continuity over a period of 6-12 months.

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