Yearly Archives: 2010

Downgrades are upgrades

“Suitemates” is the big new marketing campaign by Kinaxis. Episode 3 of a six-episode short video series has been just released, telling the fictional story of BILK Moore – the merger between two ERP companies and how their two CEOs end up behind bars for fraud and unethical business conduct. Their software is so full of bugs that even upgrading doesn’t fix it, it just adds new errors, that require new upgrades, that still won’t work because…

Posted in THIS and THAT
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Supply chain vulnerability: Mitigation strategies

Which mitigation strategy that works best when faced with which supply chain catastrophe? This is a paper that every supply chain manager should read, at least once.

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Vulnerable or valuable supply chain?

Supply chain integrity must encompass both operational and reputational dimensions. Companies must invest in enhancing the integrity of their supply chains, in a manner which balances operational objectives with reputational risks.

Posted in REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
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Time for a change

With the help of a weekend, and the principle of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) I have hopefully transformed this blog to the better. I’m still working on it, as a blog is always a work in progress. It will never be really finished, and there will always be new alleys to explore.

Posted in my BLOGGING
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Suites – what suites?

Today they take us back to their company presentation after their merger, announcing the new names of their software suites, where absolutely none of the names or ludicrous acronyms they come up with make any sense.

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Risk versus vulnerability

In this paper safety and security are brought together in a unifying risk and vulnerability framework that covers both accidental and malicious events.

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Friend or foe or both?

Supply chain collaboration, easy or difficult? And can it really work? In theory yes, but in reality? Maybe not.

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Flexing your SCM muscles

Flexible supply chains can indeed “flex” their supply chain management muscles (pun intended) and show the strength that lies in them. With transportation being a key ingredient in any supply chain, much of this strength comes from flexibility in transportation.

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ERP consultants: A nightmare

Suitemates is produced by Kinaxis, a Canada-based company that delivers RapidResponse, an award-winning on-demand supply chain management tool. In Suitemates they poke fun at what they call Big ERP and how supply chain consulting companies supposedly work.

Posted in THIS and THAT
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Shrink Shrank Shrunk

This is one of the articles – if not THE article – that paved the way for many frameworks for risks in supply chains, most notably the supply-demand-process-control model.

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Transportation – the forgotten staple

Transportation is a staple ingredient in supply chains and uncertainty is a staple ingredient in risk assessments, and consequently, transportation uncertainty is a staple ingredient in supply chain risks.

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Ménage à trois – the good, the bad and the ugly

Triads in supply networks: Theorizing buyer-supplier-relationships by Thomas Y Choi and Zhaohui Wu is a fascinating read and a brilliant attempt at classifying buyer-supplier triads into nine distinctively different configurations.

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Humanitarian aid is better when decentralized

Decentralization, pre-positioning and pooling of relief items are key success factors for dramatic improvements in humanitarian operations performance in disaster response and recovery.

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Business Continuity in Global Supply Chains

Essentially, there is no difference between a business continuity plan for one organization, compared to a business continuity plan for a whole supply chain. What differs is the complexity

Posted in BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
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Supply Chain Risk Webinars

I do have a lecture on supply chain risk, but not in webinar style. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider.

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Call for papers: Humanitarian Logistics

Now there is a new source for knowledge on disaster management and humanitarian logistics, the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM).

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Better Alexa ranking – how to

Today I will share some personal thoughts on my blogging: The magic Alexa ranking, supposedly showing a website’s popularity on the Internet. But does Alexa ranking really matter? Is a high Alexa ranking really a quality sign? You know, Alexa is so easy to manipulate.

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Published. Not perished.

Publish or perish? Publish. It has taken its time, but finally it is there, the book that has my chapter in it. This book links Virtual Enterprise Networks with Supply Chain Management and Risk Management in a cross-disciplinary fashion.

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Book Review: Managing Risk and Security

Many books on supply chain risk do not deal explicitly with supply chain security; at best it is one of many aspects of discussion. This books takes supply chain security a long step forward, as it provides a cross-section of current research and future issues.

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Book Review: The Geography of Transport Systems

This book will fascinate, because it so brilliantly explains, explores, researches and reviews the spatial impact of transportation systems and how they have shaped the world that surrounds us.

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ARTICLES and PAPERS
The Catch 22 of Academic Publishing
"Publish or perish". You've heard the phrase, right? Well, apparently, getting published in the firs[...]
Robust, Resilient and Secure
Antagonistic threats against supply chains are a special and limited array of risks and uncertaintie[...]
BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
Book Review: Ethical Risk
This is - for the time being - the sixth and final review of the books in the Gower Short Guides to [...]
Risk and resilience in maritime logistics
This week's focus are risks in the maritime supply chain and today's paper sets out a framework for [...]
REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
Global Risk Reports
While waiting for the World Economic Forum Global Risk Report for 2009, the continuation of the Glob[...]
Vulnerable or valuable supply chain?
More than a year old now, but still holding not so few words of wisdom is the Pricewaterhouse Cooper[...]
from HERE and THERE
Near-shoring - less risk?
You Can’t Understand China’s Slowdown Without Understanding Supply Chains. That's the title of a rec[...]
MFworks Tutorial
MFworks has evolved from MAPFactory, originally designed by C. Dana Tomlin, the father of map alge[...]