The automotive industry has faced a perfect storm of troubles over the last 18 months. Namely, a year of global shutdowns resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, bottlenecks, labour shortages, and a deficit in semiconductors. This has shone a light on the once inconspicuous drudgery of logistics providers who make the commercial world go around.

As the automotive industry faces continuing turbulence, a barrage of technical solutions have been held aloft as remedy to global logjams but logistics leaders have also stressed that building and strengthening partnerships is essential to navigating ongoing disruptions in global supply chains.

Addressing the Automotive Logistics and Supply Chain (ALSC) Global Live conference last week, John Andrew Carmichael, global head of automotive at shipping company A.P Moller Maersk, highlighted how logistics systems needed to modernise and that the supply chain and logistics crisis currently affecting the industry has “put into perspective” how outdated certain legacy systems were.