[#305-Appendix] Managing disruption of an inbound shipment

Welcome to “Supply Chain in Numbers”. This newsletter tracks significant numbers from the supply chain world. Primarily, this newsletter publishes five prominent numbers every Monday. In this “Appendix” post (published on Thursday), one of the numbers from the week is used to illustrate more interesting points.

In this week’s Supply Chain in Numbers newsletter, I covered a disruption of a rail track along the Poland-Belarus border.

$800 to $2,000 more per China-Europe container

Poland’s recent closure of its border with Belarus has caused significant disruptions to China-Europe rail freight. Over 130 trains became stranded. Logistics firms attempted to use alternatives, such as “Hamburg Special” routes through sea-rail connections via St. Petersburg, or southern corridors through the Black Sea and Turkey; however, these routes incurred higher costs — an additional $800 to $2,000 per 40-foot container compared to the original land route. By September 25, Poland announced that it would reopen the border crossings; however, lingering congestion and instability persisted.

‘Resiliency’ and ‘Agility’ are hot words in supply chain since pandemic days. It certainly existed before but they were brought to light only in the times of earthquake, tsunami, hurricanes, large scale strikes,.. and so on. The majority of discussions (and articles, papers) focus on how to prepare for a disruption. Typical levers are multiple sourcing, additional inventory, buffer capacity, and substitution options. But all these are planned before a disruption event occurs. Hence, these are often treated as insurance policy premiums.

No matter how prepared a supply chain is, there is always a new type of disruption to deal with. As I read about the closure of the Poland-Belarus border, I thought about how a well-managed supply chain would handle this situation. This post is about such an ideal supply chain.

Consider you are a Transportation Manager in an European company and you have inbound shipments (>3 containers per day, on average) come from China via rail. This is how the incidents should unfold, again, in an ideal setting.

Within 1 hour of the border closure announcement:

1. The Transportation Manager receives an automatic notification on September 9th, 2025, from the tracking system regarding the upcoming full closure of rail and road traffic, scheduled to take effect on September 12th. The notification has “high” risk index which was calculated based on number of shipments impacted.

2. The Transportation Manager contacts the freight company (or companies) to gather any additional details they

...