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Case Study

Wistful Cosmetics: Designing supply chain resilience

By Ralf W. Seifert and Richard Markoff

2 pages

July 2022

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Reference: IMD-7-2376

This disguised case exercise presents the situation confronting Wistful Cosmetics, a cosmetics company based in Spain. The company, like many others, has been shaken by disruptions to global supply chains. Among the most prominent events are Covid, the Suez Canal blockage by the Ever Given container ship, the global capacity crisis in logistics infrastructure, and unprecedent spikes in demand. The case describes Wistful’s context and structure and challenges the reader to respond to three questions: what does the term ‘supply chain resilience’ mean?, what sorts of events would fall under this definition?, and what steps should Wistful’s supply chain director recommend, with what anticipated impacts on the operations and business model.

Learning Objective

The case provides a platform for students to consider the challenges a company might face in designing and implementing supply chain resilience.
The case will elicit challenges that are not unique to the case and that are universally present in companies today.

Keywords

Supply Chain Management, Resilience, General Management, Operations, Supply Chain

Type

Published Sources

Available Languages

English

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