Published March 10, 2021
During the virtual IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2020 in November, Jim Tompkins spoke about how the last 10 months have felt like 10 years, which is a result of the level of VUCA occurring today. The concept of VUCA – which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – was invented in the 1980s by the U.S. Army War College as a way to describe the state of the world following the Cold War. The level of VUCA occurring in 2020 is something we have never experienced before.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has had the largest global and supply chain impact, there were several other events that contributed to the high level of VUCA in 2020.
This article is provided for informational purposes only with permission of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers from the January 2021 issue of ISE magazine, Copyright2021. All rights reserved.
