Posted on June 19, 2023
The Port of Portland may or may not be open, depending on who you are talking to. Ongoing wage negotiations between union dockworkers and shipping companies have caused some to claim the port is closed while others argue it remains open but is operating at lower capacity as talks stall.
12% of U.S. GDP arrives at West Coast ports, and work slowdowns threaten the supply chain just as containers of foreign manufactured goods intended for the coming holiday season begin their trek.
“The West Coast is one of the key port areas. We’re seeing a lot of slowdowns as a result of the talks they’re in with labor unions but there is a benefit, too. Our Port of Houston is growing,” say Pam Zelbst, Sam Houston State University supply chain professor and director of the Center for Innovation and Technology. “That’s kind of unusual. Of the top 12 ports in the United States, Houston is the only one that is growing.”
The supply chain is a period of transition following Covid-induced disruptions that happen to find functional equilibrium as Artificial Intelligence enters the business world in unexpected ways. Dr. Zelbst expects AI to creep into redesign of supply chain protocols. “I’m sure that it is. One of the areas of research that I’m delving into right now is artificial intelligence, block chain and supply chain. Making low level decisions might be something that AI could do.”
Zelbst says the digitization and automation of supply chain is a direct result of covid. “People were unaware of the hiccups that were going on during covid in the supply chain and so the corrections didn’t get made right away. And so what’s happening now: supply chain professionals are looking for ways to automate decision making. If there’s an indication of something occurring, that decision can be brought to the attention of a human. We are recovering [from covid] but there is a large investment right now in technology.”
With inflationary pressures biting into American budgets the people who unload the containers ships cannot expect to be except, so demanding higher pay is not out of order. But the fragility of the supply chain and our dependency on it is fresh in consumers minds coming out of the remnants of covid and a wrinkle in the fabric ripples across the economy as we discovered. Innovations of technology will bring their own disruptions, hopefully all positive, but a strike by dock workers feels like a case of bad timing.
