Business Leaders Look for Infrastructure Package to Get the Kinks Out of the National Supply Chain

By

Gustavo Casagrandi
Image via LinkedIn.
Gustavo Casagrandi, of Volvo Construction Equipment.

Business leaders and local officials nationwide hope that President Joe Biden and Congress can deliver on their major infrastructure package. Commercial entities large and small eagerly await logistical fixes for up and down the supply chain, writes Mike Dorning for Bloomberg Businessweek.

The need for such an intervention is best evident at Volvo Construction Equipment.

Every vehicle that comes off the assembly line at the central Pennsylvania company underscores the need for passage of the infrastructure package. Unfortunately, too often, the results are less than stellar.

The influx of global supplies that feed the facility has slowed, causing production delays. For example, in April and May, bad traffic on Interstate 81 caused three delays in the delivery of steel plates from Georgia.

With no available alternatives, production frequently grinds to a standstill.

The situation at Volvo’s factory in Arvika, Sweden, is the opposite. The company often schedules deliveries of parts just one hour before the shipment is required.

“We could never do that here,” said Gustavo Casagrandi, a vice president and general manager of Volvo’s Shippensburg operations. “We would have to be continuously stopping the line with 250 people not working.”

Read more about the issue in Bloomberg Businessweek.

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