The scale and speed of the pandemic’s impact on global supply chains eclipsed anything that had been seen before. COVID-19 brought the entire global value chain to a shuddering halt, including China — the world’s factory — which contributed almost 29 percent of all global manufacturing in the year preceding the pandemic, according to the United Nations. Above all, the unprecedented scope of supply-chain disruption has revealed the fundamental fragility of the global just-in-time model that has evolved over the past decade.

It’s not only the COVID-19 pandemic, either. The war in Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions have created further impetus behind a restructuring of global supply chains, with a greater emphasis on diversification, and local and regional supply-chain networks. In the medium term, companies have shifted emphasis toward a more localized distribution network and sought out local supplier alternatives. Longer-term, the concept of nearshoring is ris