Category Archives: REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS

Posts inspired by published reports or whitepapers

London Olympics and Business Continuity

Revised on: 2015-09-12

Are UK businesses, and in particular London businesses, unprepared for the London Olympics in 2012? A recent report by Deloitte would suggest so. Over two-thirds of large companies in the UK expect the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to have virtually no impact on their ability to operate “business as usual”. Only 24% of London companies expect a medium level of disruption with just 16% planning for a high level of impact during the Games. They do realize that this event is a bit larger than the average Saturday football match, don’t they?

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Risky cities – want to work there?

Revised on: 2010-09-30

If you are doing global business, do you know where you are at risk and what risk that is most pertinent to that area? Most likely not, I would guess. AON, who in 2009 published the political risk map, identifying where supply chain risks are on the rise, has now published a people risk map that shows which countries are high or low risk. The accompanying report provides “a comparative overview of risks associated with recruitment, employment and relocation in 90 cities worldwide. These ratings enables companies to compare risk by location, identify the reasons for the risks, and determine actions to address these risks.” Is it as good as it sounds? Well, let’s have a closer look at the map and the report.

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Vulnerable or valuable supply chain?

Revised on: 2015-10-02

More than a year old now, but still holding not so few words of wisdom is the Pricewaterhouse Coopers report on supply chain integrity: From vulnerable to valuable. Their analysis shows that moving away from the typical business mindset of supply chain improvements only in terms of cost reductions is well worth the effort. Companies must invest in enhancing the integrity of their supply chains, in a manner which balances operational objectives with reputational risks. This requires developing “leading risk indicators” in addition to the typical Key Performance Indicators, in order to measure supply chain performance.

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Highway Vulnerability and Criticality Assessment

Revised on: 2015-09-26

Transportation vulnerability and resilience have been the focus of this blog for the past two days, first looking at Engineering Tranportation Lifelines and then Are roads more important than computers? Today I have a third article that relates to this subject: Assessing the vulnerability and criticality of the highway system. In 2002, AASHTO (the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) published a guideline on how to perform such an assessment, and I had almost forgotten about it, but it came back to me when I was researching my two previous posts. What makes this report worth posting about is the clear and distinct separation of the terms vulnerability and criticality.

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Are roads more important than computers?

Revised on: 2015-09-10

Critical Infrastructure. Which is more important – or ‘critical’ – road networks or computers? What if one day you could no longer use your computer or the Internet for one month, but you could still go anywhere by car? Or what if one day you could no longer go anywhere by car for one month, but you still had your computer or the Internet up and running, which would be worse? I would rather live without computers than without roads…

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Engineering transportation lifelines

Revised on: 2011-02-25

New Zealand is probably not the fist country that comes to mind when thinking of state-of-the-art transportation lifeline engineering. Nonetheless, I think it is time to consider New Zealand as being one of the countries at the very forefront. A 2008 research project, initiated by the New Zealand Transport Agency, provides a close look at how New Zealand practices lifelines engineering. The report is well-written, to the point and provides insight sand recommendations that are applicable not only to New Zealand, but to road and transport authorities anywhere.

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A Decade of Living Dangerously

Revised on: 2011-01-06

Do you remember the movie The Year of Living Dangerously with Mel Gibson? Topically unrelated maybe, but The Chartered Management Institute has just published The Decade of Living Dangerously, their Business Continuity Management Report, showing the current state of Business Continuity Management in the UK, and the development since 1999, hence the ‘catchy’ title. The report is an interesting read, because not all is well in the UK, despite the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004 that requires frontline responders to maintain internal BCM arrangements, but things are slowly improving.

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Saving Norway’s crumbling infrastructure

Revised on: 2015-10-05

Following up my post this morning called “D-Day for Norway’s Transport Infrastructure“, the numbers are out now: The government intends to spend some 320,000,000 NOK ($45,000,000,000) on transport infrastructure over the next 10 years. Will it be enough? This reminds me of a post I had earlier, called “America’s crumbling infrastructure“, where the Minneapolis bridge collapse was a timely wake-up call for America to invest in its infrastructure. Will Norway be able to save its crumbling infrastructure without such a disaster?

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The supply chain of the future

Revised on: 2011-03-10

A recent report by IBM, referenced by Supply Chain Digest in IBM Lays Out its Vision for the Supply Chain of the Future, makes a compelling argument for how future supply chains should be: instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. The article features an interesting table, where these three characteristics are linked to SCM competencies and how they can be implemented.

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Supply chain disruption risk on the rise

Revised on: 2015-09-23

Global supply chains are increasingly becoming more vulnerable to potential disruption to trade, says Aon, one of the world’s leading providers of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage. Every year, Aon publishes a political risk map, and in 2009 the number of countries tagged with ‘supply chain vulnerability’ has increased from 38 to 54 due to risks ranging from government embargo or interference with a supplier through to strikes, terrorism and sabotage.

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Infrastructure – essential for competitiveness?

Revised on: 2015-09-26

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed my regular rants about the state of the Norwegian infrastructure, and roads in particular. Now, aftenposten.no reports that there is some support from the Global Competitiveness Report by the World Economic Forum. In overall infrastructure quality, Norway ranks 28/134, behind many other European countries, which is not too bad, but when it comes to road quality, Norway ranks 48/134, even behind countries such as Namibia (23/134), Tunisia (39/134) and Botswana (44/134). This is not good news.

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Global Risks 2009 – Countries at risk?

Revised on: 2015-09-02

How will the current financial downturn affect supply chains? That’s what we all wonder about, isn’t it? I was hoping that the annual Global Risks report, published by the World Economic Forum would shed some light on that, picking up on their 2008 subject, Hyper-optimization and supply chain vulnerability: an invisible global risk?. But, the 2009 report did not follow up that particular subject, it went in a different direction, taking a broader look, not a certain industries or sectors or parts of the economy, but looking at whole countries and their risk preparedness. What the financial crisis has shown, is that the globalized world is interconnected.

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The Benefits of Investing in Supply Chain Security

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Revised on: 2015-09-26

With the memory of attacks by Somali pirates still fresh in mind, supply chain security has come to the attention of supply chain managers. Already in 2005, the IBM Center for the Business of Government published “Investing in Supply Chain Security: Collateral Benefits”, a report which highlights how certain security investments can create collateral benefits well beyond the immediate security breach they were aimed at. In addition, the report also shows how investments in security programs can increase the efficiency, flexibility and resilience of the supply chain.

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Global Risk Reports

Revised on: 2015-09-27

While waiting for the World Economic Forum Global Risk Report for 2009, the continuation of the Global Risk Report 2008, on which I have reported earlier, it may be time to read the other risk reports by the World Economic Forum. Among the general global reports there are also special issues that take a closer at look at Europe, India and the Middle East.

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When disaster strikes…

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Revised on: 2011-03-10

…how does the transportation network recover? And why are transportation networks so essential to disaster recovery? Ho do effective transportation networks contribute to the recovery effort? Is recovery even possible without a functioning transportation network? This was the topic of a session I attended at TRB 2009 this week. Although this session was mainly aimed at US transportation agencies, the introduction to the panel discussion had some key points I would like to reiterate here.

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Global Risks 2008 – A prediction come true

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Revised on: 2011-07-15

In my post on Hyper-optimization and supply chain vulnerability: an invisible global risk? I highlighted some of the issues in Global Risks 2008, a report prepared by the World Economic Forum. It is now frightening to see how true the predictions in this report were, in particular, how it predicted the current economic downturn. Maybe we should pay more attention to these reports?

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America’s Crumbling Infrastructure

Revised on: 2015-11-17

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. The 2005 Report Card for America’s infrastructure issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) leaves no doubt: It’s a D. Is America’s critical infrastructure in critical condition?

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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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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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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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