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Dr. Sanjaya Mayadunne, associate professor of decision sciences and management information systems at Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC), said it will take time before consumers see any noticeable impacts due to the port strike.

Mayadunne said the port strike has created an interruption in supply chain management, which has two goals: efficiency and responsiveness. Efficiency is how effectively companies can minimize costs across the supply chain. Responsiveness is how well a company can deliver products to its customers at the right time and place. What has been lacking, he said, is resiliency, which relates to how quickly a company can adapt to external conditions, from market conditions to, in this case, a port strike.

“The pandemic taught us a lot of things about how supply chain management is susceptible to external effects,” said Mayadunne. “Since the pandemic, companies have taken steps to improve resiliency through diversification, carrying more inventory and improved forecasting.

Mayadunne said that the key to the full impact of the port strike is how long it lasts.

“A few weeks will not impact the consumer by too much,” he said. “For example, for holiday shopping, companies have had their supplies in hand for months.”

Where consumers could see impacts in pricing and availability will begin to show if the strike lasts a month or more. In the state of Georgia, agricultural exports are a significant part of the state’s economy.

“Perishable items, like nuts and poultry, will depend on how much inventory the farmers have and their ability to store those items,” he said. “Even with items they can store, the next challenge is how to get it out.”

Mayadunne said that one strategy would be using rail to move items to ports in California that are not impacted by the current strike, but that can be problematic because of limited capacity, which will drive up costs.

“If this port strike continues through the end of this year and into January, we’re going to start seeing long-term effects,” he said. “Even though Georgia does have enough diversity in the items it produces, the ability to store it and the shelf life of those products will hit the upper limit sooner than later.”

Dr. Sanjaya Mayadunne received his Ph.D. in information systems and operations management from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte. At GGC, Mayadunne teaches courses in supply chain management and management science. His classes focus on various optimization tools and techniques. An emphasis is placed on the application of these techniques to solve problems in business operations and logistics.

His research interests include transportation networks, warehouse optimization and spatial competition in the retail industry. His research has recently been published in the International Journal of Production Economics (IJPE) and Supply Chain Analytics and has been presented at national conferences such as INFORMS and the ICIS Workshop on E-Business. He has served as a reviewer for IJPE.