It is not a surprise to anyone that supply chains globally have been an issue since the beginning of the pandemic. Industries everywhere around the world have faced numerous additional challenges in managing supply chains and combatting the increased demand while having less supply on hand. We have not been exempt from these. However, Form & Build has taken these challenges head on and have taken all the steps possible to ensure that we are the most equipped to deal with the issues.

What Happened?

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been a variety of supply chain issues. Now, what has caused these issues? When the pandemic first began, citizens globally (we’ll focus on Canada) stopped buying many goods in store locally. There are various reasons for this. One being that many local stores were shut down during the pandemic and could not be open for business to the public, while another reason is that many citizens did not want to leave their house if they didn’t have to, because again, a global pandemic was happening and there was a virus spreading rapidly throughout the world, and people simply didn’t want to take their chances.

Effect on the Supply Chain

There was a drastically significant increase in online spending, with the majority of the purchases happening from manufacturers and businesses overseas. One example of the issues faced would be that ordering from overseas now takes around 75 days, while that number used to be halved. Paired with the many new rules and regulations for businesses globally that were COVID driven, these businesses were manufacturing and shipping out more than ever before, and at a slower rate than before. This created massive log jams for every industry, and definitely the construction materials industry. Even manufacturers based in Canada, selling in Canada, faced “log jams” because of the increased demand and slower rate of shipping out. Paired with the large decrease in the workforce in Canada, again slowing down the production in various industries. This has never really settled down, and many people have found that ordering online is now simply the way to go. This has been a definite cause of the “log jams” going on with supply chains. An unfortunate side effect of this has been that prices were required to go up to combat the increased cost from manufacturers, due to less supply being created.

What We Have Done

Form & Build has taken every measure to ensure we are working as efficiently with the supply chain woes as possible. We have taken the steps to get as much inventory as we can right now, currently meaning our inventory supply is very high with many products. There are still some products with longer wait times than others. For best results for large orders, please order them at your earliest availability. Please reach out to a sales representative, and they will work diligently with you to ensure that we can all succeed in ordering in a timely manner. One important thing to note is for larger orders such as forms, the sooner you order the higher there is a chance its ready for you in the spring. One optimistic point on the supply chain woes is that inventory management precision is at an all time high. We can ensure you that there will be no issues at all when it comes to inventory mismanagement, not that there were any before.