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Cindy Farrer is the senior services manager of quality and supply chain at the Purdue Manufacturing Extension Partnership. She's an accomplished leader with over 35 years of global experience in manufacturing quality and supply chain management.

Michelle: You recently wrote an article for Quality called “Quality Resilience in a Volatile Trade Environment.” Can you tell our listeners how you decided to write about this topic?

Cindy: Actually, that is a topic that's sort of the intersection of what I am involved in working with. Manufacturers, through the Purdue MEP, and, just with all the different dynamics going on globally, I think, supply chain resiliency is a very large topic. And then quality, in my role working with companies on implementing quality management systems, it's very much impacted. And indeed, the whole mindset of maintaining quality management system, it sometimes gets left aside, with all this volatility, but it needs to be, very much, in the forefront.

So, I thought that would be a good, relevant topic. As you know, I had thought about doing one on applications for quality because that's also something that is very relevant and I'm working on. But I know you've had a lot of topics already on that, so I thought this might be a little bit different spin.

Michelle: Definitely a good angle and very timely right now. So, you've been in the field a long time. Can you tell us what's kind of your predictions for supply chain for next year or what's coming or anything you see changing?

Cindy: Prior to this role that I'm doing with Purdue and supply chain and quality, I was leading a very large, quality and operator supply chain and operations organization for a multinational company. And, just as I was moving on to this next opportunity, I think, the dynamics that we were managing was like nothing we've ever experienced. I mean, that was, let's say mid-20, -22ish time frame, 2023. And, you think about coming out of the pandemic, which put a lot of changes on managing supply chains.

And then, just with what was going on in markets and in the environment with labor availability and geopolitical changes and trade policy changes, it really took a field that probably didn't have to be changing all the time to now, an environment where disruption, it's become the norm.

And so, I think, it's a shift in what's going on in supply chains. And it's something that not only supply chain and company leaders, but definitely quality professionals, are going to need to manage.

And someone was telling me the uncertainty index they measured like last year was higher than during the pandemic.