Finally it appears that someone has developed an easy, hands-on, not-so-academic and straightforward approach to global supply chain risk management. When I say finally, it is because it is not often that I come across papers that have fully grasped the concept of supply chain risk management and made it look so easy at the same time.
The BBC news this morning ran an interesting and worrying story: Shipping companies are considering to avoid The Somali coast and Suez canal on their way to Europe and rather take the long route around Africa. That will make for an extra lead time of 3-4 weeks, but this could mean a temporary supply chain disruption for Europe, while the new lead times settle in.
The International Transport Economics Conference (ITrEC) 2009 will be held during June 15-16, 2009, at the University of Minnesota. If you haven’t already done so, make sure to bookmark this conference in your calendar.
In Chopra and Sodhi (2004) ‘Managing Risk to Avoid Supply-Chain Breakdown’ the first key message is that some mitigation strategies may actually increase risk in some business areas, rather than reduce it.The second key message is that the cost of mitigating or building up a reserve must be balanced against the level of risk.
When faced with a supply chain disruption, proactive and reactive supply chain risk management can in fact make or break a company’s existence.
Dette er et foredrag jeg holdt på Konferansen Transport og Logistikk 2008, på Gardermoen, 15.oktober 2008. Foredraget “Risikohåndtering i forsyningskjeder” var en del av programmet omkring Logistikkutfordringer. Dette var første gang jeg foredrog om supply chain risk på norsk
It is now frightening to see how true the predictions in this report were in Global Risks 2008, a report prepared by the World Economic Forum. I can only hope that the global financial turmoil does not translate into a global supply chain turmoil.
Not only is a supply chain a network of interlinked actors, but the links (or relations, if you so wish) are constantly changing, with new ones appearing and old ones dissipating.
When it comes to a business’ physical location in relation to the functioning of the supply chain, obviously there are good locations and bad locations. Can a business’ organization compensate for that?
To backup or not to backup? Honestly, you shouldn’t even be asking yourself this question. Can you afford not to backup? Data recovery can be very costly, while data backup is a cheap insurance premium.
The vulnerability of the transportation network as part of the supply chain is of particular interest in countries or regions with sparsely populated areas, and hence, a sparse transportation network, because sparse transportation networks, and thus sparse supply chains, are vulnerable to many different kinds of internal and external risks.
Soaring fuel prices combined with increasing awareness of the need to adapt for a low-carbon future has brought sustainability to the forefront of every manufacturer’s agenda. How can regulators and manufacturers integrate sustainability in to industrial policy and practice?
The graphical model uses a Bayesian Network to determine the accumulated probability of failure in supply networks. The Bayesian network captures common causal relations of risk events in a supply chain. It is not complete and is not constructed by a proper risk assessment of a special company.
A sustainable supply chain is a supply chain where resources are not just consumed but also replenished, and where business decisions consider long-term overall environmental and societal impacts.
In ‘A conceptual framework of vulnerability in firms’ inbound and outbound logistics flows.’, Göran Svensson separates inbound and outbound flows, adds 2 categories of disturbance (quantitative and qualitative), and also adds 2 sources of disturbance (atomistic and holistic) create 4 vulnerability scenarios.
Separating the chaff from the wheat and diving straight into the essence of the paper, Svensson aligns his framework along two dimensions, categories of disturbance and sources of disturbance. He then divides the categories into either quantitative or qualitative disturbances. Sources of disturbance are either atomistic (direct) or holistic (indirect).
My daily morning routine includes a cup of coffee while watching the World Business Report on BBC World News. Today they had a special report on America’s crumbling and failing infrastructure.
In her article Drivers of supply chain vulnerability: an integrated framework, Helen Peck identifies four drivers of supply chain vulnerability:Value stream, product or processes,Assets and infrastructure dependencies,Organizations and inter-organizational networks,The Environment.
In a recent study undertaken by the Molde Research Institute in Norway, a point is made that the typical socio-economic impact of road network disruptions in Western Norway varies greatly, depending on a) the traffic volume, b) the actual possibilities of rerouting traffic and c) the composition of the traffic that uses the impacted road.
Classical facility location models assume that once optimally located and set up, facilities will operate as planned, smoothly, and without interruption. In reality, though, operations seldom go as planned; interruptions, unscheduled downtime and failures occur every once in a while, with unplanned and unbudgeted disruption costs as a consequence.
