Latest posts

Biting the hand that feeds. All firms are snakes.

‘All firms are snakes’. So says Paul D. Cousins in A conceptual model for managing long-term inter-organisational relationships, published in 2002. ‘They are maximisers and satisfiers concerned with their own survival and self-interest’.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Does product design impact supply chain risk?

What is in the supply chain is determined by a design process, and consequently, is it possible to design supply chain risk out of (or in to) the supply chain?

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


The latest trends in logistics and SCM research

What is at the forefront of current research in supply chain management and logistics right now? I know, thanks to to Gyöngi Kovács at interorganisational.org, who attended the NOFOMA 2009 conference.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Resilience revisited

How many ways are there for defining vulnerability and criticality, really? Traditionally, risk matrixes have a likelihood/impact approach, but not always. Yesterday, I was examining a criticality/vulnerability matrix.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Highway Vulnerability and Criticality Assessment

It is important to distinguish to between criticality and vulnerability when assessing the importance of the road and highway network. Collectively, these factors are an indication of the conditions, concerns, consequences, and capabilities that might cause an operating agency to label an asset “critical.”

Posted in REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS


Are roads more important than computers?

The objective of the first project ‘Protection of Society’ (POS) or ‘Beskyttelse av Samfunnet’ (BAS, in Norwegian) was to describe how modern society will react to and can protect itself when facing modern warfare. In doing so, the report identified key components and functions that are essential to a modern society, and interdependencies between them.

Posted in REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS


Engineering transportation lifelines

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.

Posted in REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS


The six ways of dealing with risk

Avoid, Reduce, Transfer and Retain or Accept are the classic four ways of dealing with risk in a risk matrix. However, there are two more: Exploit and Ignore.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Risk Management: Contingent versus Mitigative

Risk management needs to address both sides of the risk: what lies behind the risk (source) and what lies in front of it (consequences).

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Broader research = better research?

I like mixing ideas, and my approach to logistics, or supply chain management is no exception.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


What kind of Supplychainist are you?

What is SCM really, is it just a new name for logistics or is it possible to distinguish certain perspectives?

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Supply Chain Risk Management – A relationship approach

SCRM needs to address the whole supply chain, since risk can emanate from any part of the supply chain and potentially affect the performance of the entire supply chain.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Google Scholar – really scholarly?

Remember my previous post on Online Journals – curse or blessing? Here’s another take on the issue of online scholarly research: Google Scholar. In Is Google Scholar Truely Scholarly?, on the Black Belt Librarian blog, there is a reference to study published in the May 2009  issue of College & Research Libraries that investigates how Google Scholar compares to library databases. As it turns out, Google Scholar is on average 17.6 percent more scholarly than materials found only in library databases. D’oh! So should you switch to Google Scholar?

Google Scholar

Google Scholar (GS) was released as a beta product in November of 2004. Since then,

Read more

Posted in THIS and THAT


Book Review: Global Supply Chain Management

This is a handbook indeed, allowing the reader to focus on one area of investigation at the time, while never leaving the whole chain out of sight. My interest in it stems from the fact that it contains a chapter on risk management.

Posted in BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS


How to get a PhD without a dissertation

This is a true story about how I was credited with a PhD without having one, just because someone mistook one of the posts on this blog to be my PhD. And anyone looking up my work after reading that article now thinks I really have a PhD.

Posted in THIS and THAT


Risk in supply networks – a tale of principals and agents

It is not often that I see a paper focusing on the network relationships risks rather than the network risks, let alone applying the principal-agent theory so elegantly.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Fragility and sustainability: emerging research areas?

Should short-term loss-minimization and short-term profit maximization really be the driving force behind supply chain risk management?

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Online journals – curse or blessing?

Making scholarly articles available online has narrowed citations to more recent and less diverse articles than before – the opposite of what most people expect.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Supply chain risk management – a literature review

Is it possible to summarize seven years of supply chain risk management research and find a common theme or definition of what supply chain risk is all about?

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


Lean + Agile = LeAgile: a happy marriage?

Opposites attract and in the supply chain world, “lean” and “agile” appear to be opposites. Both management strategies have their advantages and disadvantages.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS


ARTICLES and PAPERS
Shippers, carriers and disruptions
Both shippers and motor carriers are impacted by travel time variability, but they react differently[...]
Risky decisions - just do it, or not?
Choosing the right supplier is a risky decision. Chose the wrong supplier, and you may face a severe[...]
BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
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[...]
Book Review: This is where raster GIS started...
...well not really, but Geographic Information Systems and Cartographic Modeling by Dana Tomlin spar[...]
REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
Global Risk Reports
While waiting for the World Economic Forum Global Risk Report for 2009, the continuation of the Glob[...]
Supply chain disruption risk on the rise
Global supply chains are increasingly becoming more vulnerable to potential disruption to trade, say[...]