Yearly Archives: 2008

Economies of scale

Revised on: 2011-03-22

In an article in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet today, some of Norways’s major construction businesses, Skanska, Veidekke and Mesta, lament the fact that infrastructure investments in Norway come in small pieces only, and not as large-scale projects, which could have given a bigger bang for the buck, or more kilometers for the kroner, to rephrase it into Norwegian terms.

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From the back room to the board room

Revised on: 2015-09-03

Supply chain management used to be relegated to the logistics department of businesses and hardly thought of as matters concerning the top-level management. Similarly, risk management was handled by insurance specialists who concentrated on facilities, employees and shipping losses and security. However, in my opinion, risk and particularly supply chain risk should be an integral part of any board room discussion. Why?

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Accessibility Index – Transport Network Vulnerability

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Revised on: 2015-09-08

I had the pleasure of meeting M.A.P. Taylor at the 3rd International Symposium on Transport Network Vulnerability (INSTR 2007). His research has many bearings towards my own research in that it is concerned with transport network vulnerability in sparse rural and remote networks. In his 2006 paper, Application of Accessibility Based Methods for Vulnerability Analysis of Strategic Road Networks, Taylor and his fellow contributors develop a methodology for assessing the socio-economic impacts of transport network degradation by using the change in accessibility prior to and after degradation of the road network as a measure for the importance or criticality of the road link.

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Supply Chain Disruptions – Does location matter?

Revised on: 2011-01-06

In regions or countries with sparse transportation networks or few transportation mode choices the structure or design of the supply chain, along with the organization and preparedness become important factors in determining if a company has an favorable or a unfavorable location. In locations with a sparse transportation network there are maybe not so many options as to setting up the supply chain; the supply chain is in fact constrained by a certain physical location. Does this make it more susceptible to disruptions?

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How to Design Mitigation Capabilities

Revised on: 2015-09-26

There hasn’t been a literature review on this blog for a while, so it’s time to pick up where I left. Jumping from 1997 in review of Asbjørnslett’s “Assess the vulnerability of your production system” to 2007 in today’s review, I can tell that supply chain research has made a big leap forward. Today’s article presents six propositions that relate the severity of supply chain disruptions to supply chain design characteristics and supply chain mitigation capabilities, illustrating the connections between supply chain risk, vulnerability, resilience, and business continuity planning.

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Book Review: Research Methodologies in SCM

Revised on: 2015-09-10

Is there something like the right research design for supply chain studies? I believe there is, and in Research Methodologies in Supply Chain Management it is more than likely that you too will find a research approach that will suit your needs. Every budding supply chain researcher (and senior researcher for that matter) should read this book. Within the 36 chapters 70 authors bring together a rich selection of theoretical and practical examples of how research methodologies are applied in supply chain management.

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Cutting back on road spending may not be wise

Revised on: 2011-08-03

In an article today, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet revealed that Statens Vegvesen (or the Norwegian Public Road Administration in English), which oversees the planning, construction and operation of the national and county road networks, is going to make major cuts to their budget, thus halting or severely delaying major infrastructure projects.

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Supply Chain Visibility through Web Conferencing

Revised on: 2011-05-24

It’s weekend and time for some reflections. Maybe slightly off-topic for this blog, but the other day I came across “Web Conferencing”, a feature-rich full web collaboration service, and it occurred to me how useful this tool is in Supply Chain Management. One of the core strategies in Supply Chain Risk Management is to increase Supply Chain Visibility, because optimizing individual links in a supply chain is of limited value if these individual links have little or no visibility of what is happening upstream and downstream. This will also assist in achieving Supply Chain Confidence, since all partners, stakeholders and operators within the Supply Chain are aware of each others whereabouts and doabouts, so to speak.

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NOFOMA – The Nordic Logistics Research Network

Revised on: 2015-09-10

The Nordic Logistics Research Network (NOFOMA) is a network of Nordic researchers within the field of Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Why haven’t I heard about this before…stupid me! It’s amazing how one can be a researcher in a certain field without being aware of the most obvious network one should join. If I had known this I could have made many connections already.

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The Nordic approach to Logistics and Supply Chain Management?

Revised on: 2015-09-29

Is there such a thing as a typically Nordic way of thinking within the field of Supply Chain Management? A new book is out, trying to answer that question: Northern Lights in Logistics & Supply Chain Management by Jan Stentoft Arlbjørn, Árni Halldórsson, Marianne Jahre, Karen Spens (eds.). I came across this book while doing some Google searches on supply chain risk, ending up on www.interorgainisational.org, a site run by two university professors, Gyöngyi Kovács and Arni Halldorsson, and dedicated to showing a different side of logistics than the pure business and money focus it usually has. Halldorson is also a contributor to the book.

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Supply chain vulnerability: an invisible global risk?

Revised on: 2011-07-15

Supply chain disruption – a global issue? All companies and governments dependent on external suppliers are exposed to the risks of disruption in their supply chain. But the extent and complexity of current global supply chains mean that the problem of supply chain management is not limited to a single enterprise or industry: even a relatively small supply chain disruption caused by a global risk event may ultimately have consequences across the global economic system.

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eSourcingWiki – can it be trusted?

Revised on: 2015-09-10

The other day I came across eSourcingWiki, “a global collaborative effort for supply management best practices and dynamic content creation.” Personally, I have access to a college library. Not everyone has, so can they learn from eSourcingWiki? Is this a place where I can put out my own research, or search for knowledge from others? Is the information academically sound and valid?

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The Handbook of Business Continuity Management

Revised on: 2015-09-20

As I said in my post yesterday, Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) has many similarities with Business Continuity Management (BCM), which is why SCRM can and should draw upon BCM for advice. One of many good references for further reading on this subject is the The Definitive Handbook of Business Continuity Management by Andrew Hiles. I haven’t read enough books on BCM to say that this is “the definitive” handbook; it certainly is “a comprehensive” handbook. This 600-something pages heavy brick of a book is probably not something you read from cover to cover. I did. Well, most of it, that’s how my weekend went by in a fly…

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Supply Chain Risk – Business Continuity Management

Revised on: 2011-08-01

Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) has many similarities with Business Continuity Management (BCM). As companies sourced their materials from sources further and further away, and as customers were increasingly spread around the globe, the logistics chains grew more and more complex, the field of Logistics grew into Supply Chain Management.

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A lesson in supply chain disruption: German railways during WWII

Revised on: 2015-09-10

Now this may seem totally off topic, but I have become so engrossed with modern-day supply chains that I have forgotten that supply chain disruptions have occurred as frequently in the past as today, and particular within the military in war times. A supply chain serving a war machine is under extreme strain, but is an essential element in winning or losing not only a battle or two, but an entire war.

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Location, location, location

Revised on: 2011-02-25

Albeit many supply chains make use of more than one, if not all modes of transport, the vulnerability of the transportation network is of particular interest in countries or regions with sparsely populated areas, and hence, a sparse transportation network, often with only one mode of transportation available between population centers, meaning this centre can only be reached by either rail, sea, air or road. Having basically only one transportation link to the aforementioned population centers, it becomes extremely vulnerable to any disruption in the transportation system or supply chain, since in a possible worst-case scenario no suitable alternative exists.

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Assess the vulnerability of your production system

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Revised on: 2015-09-08

So far I have reviewed “international” literature and web sites, and it is only fitting that now it is time for the Norwegian “domestic” literature to be reviewed. Assess the vulnerability of your production system was written back in 1997, by Bjørn Egil Asbjørnslett and Marvin Rausand, both now high-profile academics within risk analysis in Norway.

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Sheffi’s disruption profile

Revised on: 2011-02-25

There is a figure in the book The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage by Yossi Sheffi that every supply chain risk manager (or even every CEO for that matter) should take note of: the disruption profile. This is tell-tale illustration of what happens when supply chains are disrupted and businesses are impacted. They may, or may not, be able to bounce back to where they were before the event. The survivability of the company depends solely on the company’s resilience towards the disruption.

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A risky business? The top 10 challenges of offshoring

Revised on: 2011-03-21

Organisations embarking on offshoring face multiple challenges; many of which can be extremely daunting. In A risky business? The top 10 challenges of offshoring the Director of Global Sourcing at EquaTerra, Sridhar Vedala, explores the top 10 challenges of offshoring today and provides suggestions on how to tackle them head on. Although there are many challenges associated with offshoring, through proper planning and due diligence, they can be overcome.

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Categorization of Supply Chain Risk

Revised on: 2015-09-09

In chapter 2 in Supply Chain Risk by Claire Brindley, there is a framework for assessing and positioning supply chain risk issues, written by Andreas Norrman and Robert Lindroth, called Categorization of Supply Chain Risk and Risk Management. What I like about the framework is that it works along three dimensions, each highlighting different areas of research issues or managerial actions: 1) the Supply Chain itself, 2) Risk Management processes and 3) Types of Risk. The framework clearly shows how the dimensions are intertwined and related such that no issue can be distinctively separated from the other.

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