Yearly Archives: 2011

Are supply and demand elasticity a risk?

This paper describes the performance of supply chains based on their elasticities of supply and demand. The model can be used to predict a supply chain’s ability to respond to supply interruptions, cost increases, and demand shifts, while also quantifying the degree to which it is prone to the bullwhip effect.

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Call for papers: S-D Logic and Supply Chain Risk

The International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics (IJPDLM) is planning a Special Issue on papers dedicated to Applying service-dominant (S-D) logic to physical distribution and logistics management, including topics such as Supply network resilience and Natural disaster management in supply networks.

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Call for papers: Supply Chain Risk in China

Supply chain and operations management are increasingly global, and China has become the world’s manufacturing centre. That is why the International Journal of Applied Management Science (IJAMS) has issued a call for papers for a special issue on Supply Chain and Operations Management in China.

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Hiperos – the Integrated View of Supplier Risk

In this whitepaper by hiperos.com, supplier risk management is focused on four areas: the supplier’s viability, performance, compliance and corporate social performance. That is a perspective very much in line with my own ideas of holistic risk management and how a company should work with risk.

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Call for papers: Global Supply Chain Risk Management

Are you currently planning to write or actually writing a paper on supply chain risk and wondering what would be a good journal to publish it in? Here is one for you: A special issue of Production and Operations Management titled Global Supply Chain Risk Management

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The UK Transport Network Resilience…and I

The report, written by the Hyder Consulting Group, dated 2010 and titled Network Resilience and Adaptation, assesses and details in great depth the vulnerability and resilience of the transport infrastructure in the East of England. And it uses me as a reference.

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Zycus and the Supply Risk Explosion

Today’s list of supply-related risks can seem nearly infinite and how can any firm not be overwhelmed by this? Zycus, the self-proclaimed spend management experts, have written a whitepaper about it, where they detail how firms can move towards holistic supply-risk management.

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Earthquake, tsunami, meltdown and data backup

Perhaps I’m capitalizing on the current catchphrases of the day, but in a sense I too was in disaster management mode the last night. My blog was down. I had caused it myself, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to solve it. Until I found the rescue button: Site Backup and Restore.

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Visualizing the risk of global sourcing

A picture says more than a thousand words, and here is one paper that has it all and that literally illustrates the differences between different sourcing strategies, defining three basic cost elements in global sourcing: static, dynamic and hidden cost.

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Book Review – Fraud Risk

This is a fascinating book, showing how easy it may be for employees, customers, clients and consultants to commit fraud, and how easy it may be for management to detect and to prevent this. It is a book I highly recommend for anyone working in procurement or supply chain management.

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Future Value Chain Trends 2020

The twelve future trends that will shape value chains and supply chain management during this decade. Are you ready for the 12 global root trends that address change in society, shopper behavior, environment and technology? Above all, sustainability is the new buzzword.

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Extreme Weather Hazards and Transportation Vulnerability

Weather Extremes: Assessment of Impacts on Transport Systems and Hazards for European Regions is an EU project that aims at analysing the economic costs of more frequent and more extreme weather events on transport and on the wider economy and explores adaptation strategies in the context of sustainable policy design.

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Time is precious

Time is important and a supply chain works best when it is on time. For trains it is imperative to be on time and in 1944, Hans Hilfiker (1901-1993), a Swiss engineer and designer and employee of the Federal Swiss Railways, created a clock, which has since become known as the “Official Swiss Railways Clock” and a national icon.

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How Effective Pallet Management Can Benefit the Full Supply Chain

One seemingly small link in the supply chain of goods is pallets; those little timber crates on which most goods are secured for movement and handling. Despite their relatively small role, how we think about them and how we use them can have a massive knock on effect to the whole supply chain.

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Food commodity supply chains at risk?

Have the prices gone up at your local supermarket recently? Maybe your favorite chocolate is suddenly a lot more expensive? Do you wonder why? You may not think much about it, but the bigger picture that lays behind is grim-looking, to say the least.

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How to use Amazon Cloudfront as CDN

The delivery network is as crucial to a blog as it is to any business. While, it is important to have the right infrastructure, aka cables and connections, what really matters most – as in much of real-life logistics – is delivery speed. Using Amazon CloudFront I can ensure timely and reliable delivery of my blog posts to any reader, anywhere.

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The supply chain of the future

Companies should design their portfolios of manufacturing and supplier networks to minimize the total landed-cost risk under different scenarios. The goal should be identifying a resilient manufacturing and sourcing footprint—even when it’s not necessarily the lowest cost one today.

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Christchurch earthquake…again!?!

Oh dear…another earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, less than 6 months after the previous disaster, and this time perhaps even more devastating. One thing for sure, this community is having its disaster plans, business continuity measures and its resilience (and resolve) tested to the full

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Supply Chain Turbulence

The norm in supply chain management is that variability is detrimental to performance as it causes cost in the form of stock-outs, poor capacity utilisation, and costly buffers. This paper questions this approach and argues that in the light of increasing turbulence a different approach to supply chain management is needed.

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2010 – the year of catastrophe

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, an article that paints 2010 as the year of the catastrophe, and the insurance company Swiss Re estimates that worldwide economic losses from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters reached $222 billion last year – more than triple the losses in 2009.

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ARTICLES and PAPERS
Critical: Beer Distribution
I'm not in the habit of making Friday a day for funny blog posts, but today's article highlights a v[...]
Organisational Resilience
Organisational Resilience Literature. "What to read, and what not to read". That could be the popula[...]
BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
Book Review: Managing Risk and Security
One of my readers suggested this book to me via  a comment on my supply chain literature list pages[...]
Can your business take a blow?
Are you prepared for whatever mishaps your business throws at you? If you're not, you better start l[...]
REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
Calculating the Value-at-Risk
Some of you may remember that I posted about the SCOR Framework for Supply Chain Risk Management ear[...]
Managing supply chain risk
In September and October 2009 the Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed 500 company executives with r[...]
from HERE and THERE
No grit No roads No show?
Today's rather cryptic title reflects on the impacts of the current winter weather, and is a fitting[...]
Sustainability means less vulnerability?
Does sustainability improve a a company’s resilience towards supply chain vulnerabilities? Recently,[...]