Business View Magazine Apr-2023

17 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 4 work with customers to reformulate their recipes with components that were available. When a specialized paper product manufacturer experienced an unforeseen shortage of its critical supply of the raw material sodium metabisulfite because of the severe winter storm in Texas in 2021, Univar Solutions came up with a custom solution by identifying a comparable material, liquid sodium bisulfite, that wouldn’t compromise on safety or quality. We then figured out the logistics of moving the bulk product into totes and delivered the liquid material in record time to avoid any production delays. 3. INVEST IN YOUR PEOPLE At the heart of our supply chain is our people, who connect our producers with customers they can’t efficiently serve. We realized that in order to keep our supply chains up and running during the early days of the pandemic, retaining the talented supply chain professionals on staff was critical. For this reason, every operational decision that we made at the time was with the safety and well-being of our staff in mind. We operated with a high degree of empathy to ensure everyone stayed safe. For example, during the pandemic, we had our customer service and sales support teams work remotely. This not only helped them stay healthy but also helped our warehouse employees, drivers, and others who still needed to go into our branches. They were exposed to fewer people, making it easier to practice social distancing. When the United States experienced a shortage in hand sanitizer at the start of the pandemic, our technical teams stepped up to formulate our own sanitizer. Our packaging service teams assisted in the project by packaging solution in personal- size bottles that were distributed to drivers and operations teams. Part of our success during the pandemic was that Univar Solutions has regularly invested in the training and education of its supply chain team members. We supplemented our internal learning and development programs with third-party education partners. The pandemic also gave the company an opportunity to adjust its operations OPENING L INES