Rick Weddle: Welcome to ”Site Selection Matters,” where we take a close look at the art and science of site selection decision-making. I’m your host, Rick Weddle, president of the Site Selectors Guild. In each episode, we introduce you to leaders in the world of corporate site selection and economic development. We speak with members of the Site Selectors Guild, our economic development partners, and corporate decision makers to provide you with deep insight into the best and next practices in our profession.

In this episode, we have as our guest, Michelle Comerford, industrial and supply chain practice lead for Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Company, a leading site selection firm. Today, Michelle will talk with us about how COVID-19 pandemic has impacted manufacturers and their supply chains. More specifically, we’ll be talking to Michelle about what firms are doing right now to respond to this evolving global crisis. Join me as we welcome Michelle Comerford to ”Site Selection Matters.”

Michelle, before we jump into the COVID-19 discussion, take a minute, if you will, to explain to our listeners exactly what a supply chain is.

Michelle Comerford: Yeah, Rick. So certainly, a term that if you didn’t hear it much before people are hearing a lot of it these days in the news. But a supply chain basically is the sequence of raw materials, parts, supplies that go into manufacturing a product and everything that is kind of in that chain to get it into a manufacturing plant, make that product, and then ship it and deliver it to customers. So, if you can imagine anything around your house kinda what all went into making that product, that is a supply chain. And the interesting thing about supply chains in manufacturing is that over the past couple of decades, many of them have become very complex. As we become a more global society, companies are sourcing parts for their products from all over the world. And they went to that model for a lot of different reasons, but it’s added a lot of complexity to our manufacturing environment today.

Rick: So just because something we think was made in one country or another country, we have to look deeper, could be that the component parts are made in another country. And that makes it more vulnerable, I guess, to some sort of disruption.

Michelle: Absolutely. In fact, most things you see probably have some, one or more parts that have come from a different country than where it was ultimately made in. And so it’s been an interesting time as we have seen a lot of disruption lately.

Rick: Yeah. So that’s very interesting. So obviously the conversation topic of the day is this COVID-19 situation, which has really turned the whole world upside down. Just how has that impacted manufacturers and manufacturing overall?

Michelle: Well, that is a very loaded question, especially these days. COVID-19 has impacted manufacturing and in lots of different ways. In the U.S., you know, a month or more ago now, the impacts were largely on that supply chain as manufacturing companies over in China, where a lot of things and parts and products are made as they had to shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19, those plants suddenly couldn’t send those parts and supplies to U.S. manufacturers who are depending on them to make their products here. As the inventory that U.S. manufacturers had in stock, as that dwindled, a lot of those companies suddenly weren’t able to fulfill the orders they had for product. So that was, you know, a month or two ago.

Then looking at a couple of weeks ago, a