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In the world of supply chain, this is known as the bullwhip effect — and we’re seeing it play out in real-time a the coronavirus leads consumers to panic buying and forces hospitals to scramble for supplies. What%20procurement%20managers%20should%20expect%20from%20a%20’bu%20c577c33b950843b1906f93b5721364cd/Online_grocery_orders_surge_with_spread_of_coronavirus_4.svg “Producers are definitely ramping up to help retailers restock their shelves and make sure there aren’t any outages of whatever it is there has been a run on,” Pete Guarraia, the global head of supply chain for Bain and Company, told Supply Chain Dive in an interview. Order batching: When demand does not change, but multiple retailers place new orders on different days then it can appear as a change in demand that can be hard for manufacturers to interpret. Subscribe to Supply Chain Dive: Both ends of the supply chain will need to make responsible decisions. A central part of the bullwhip theory relies on the expectation that there is a next step in the supply chain — another company to interpret the demand signal. “What I’ve been spending all morning doing,” Rathke said earlier this week, “is assessing to what extent our clients constitute essential businesses, to what extent their suppliers also constitute essential businesses, and their customers constitute essential businesses, and making sure everybody along the supply chain of an essential business will operate to the extent necessary to service the essential business.” Whether a procurement manager is trying to figure out the best way to buy surgical masks or toilet paper, one thing is for sure: it is a challenging environment for supply chain professionals to operate in.