By: Esther Meima, Sales Manager Daabon USA
From the earliest days of the
pandemic, DAABON USA
(DUSA) has worked to be as proactive as possible with
our risk management surrounding COVID-19. Initially there was a clear focus
on
two main factors: the health & safety of our team and the stability of
our
supply chain.
DUSA had already done a lot of
work in modernizing its infrastructure to
support a team that is spread across the
United States (U.S.). With the onset of COVID-19, DUSA moved quickly to
close its primary office (located in Miami,
FL), enhancing its existing
technology systems to support a fully virtual working environment. With our
team members safe at home, our key focus was to ensure continued and
uninterrupted operations, with the ultimate goal of maintaining a high level
of
undisrupted customer service.
The DUSA team worked closely
with our customers and
logistics partners in the
U.S., as well as the DAABON leadership
and production teams in
Colombia, to keep a careful watch
over our entire supply chain. This involved increased virtual communications
with various stakeholders and careful inventory planning in an effort to
minimize any potential impact for our customers should there be any
unexpected
disruption in the pipeline.
While the
international shipping networks utilized by DUSA did experience some minor
disruptions and delays, thankfully, there were no major service outages.
With
the pandemic planning our team had put in place, we were able to
maintain reliable supply for
our customers despite these logistical issues.
In the U.S.,
coordination
of the response to the pandemic and related closures
and restrictions was largely left
to each state to manage (rather than a unified
national protocol). This generated a high level of uncertainty
regarding
potential impacts on our supply
chain, with concerns about closures of plants or highways in certain areas
of
the country. As a result of the state-by-state management of COVID-19, the
availability of trucks and an increase in trucking costs have been ongoing
issues.
In addition, demand has become
much harder to predict, with
panic buying very prevalent early on and, afterwards, shifts in consumer
behavior that have driven notable sales growth for certain segments of the
U.S.
food industry (such as snacks and home baking items), while other segments
(such as on-the-go food) suffered. This increased unpredictability required
DUSA to be as vigilant as possible to keep things running smoothly and to
enable us to meet for our customer’s needs.