Tag Archives: business continuity

Resilience Lessons from the Haiti Earthquake

Revised on: 2011-03-22

The recent earthquake in Haiti is a poignant reminder of how vulnerable a country is when it is facing disaster on a grand scale. To me, it is a reminder that that while natural disasters are not man-made, the aftermaths and consequences of the disasters often are. Disasters like this call for resilience in all parts of the community, including the infrastructure, the supply chains and society as a whole. Some of the older posts on this blog , and which do not see daylight too often may shed some light on this.

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If the UK goes cold, blame me

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Revised on: 2015-09-11

Still thinking about my recent post on the importance of security of supply, I first added salt and grit to the list of critical supplies for the UK. Now you can throw in gas, too. The BBC reports that National Grid has issued its latest “balancing alert” on gas supplies. These alerts are a signal to the market to increase gas supplies, and encourage electricity providers to use alternative fuels such as coal. It comes as low temperatures in the UK continued to drive demand, and as outages at the Norwegian gas facility Nyhamna continues. And what is my role here?

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SME: A supply chain risk?

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Revised on: 2015-09-03

Does having Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in your supply chain constitute an increased exposure to supply chain risk? Particularly if these SMEs occupy business-critical positions in the supply chain? That’s the question Peter Finch asks in his 2004 article simply (or boldy?) titled Supply Chain Risk Management. I came across this article by mere accident, because it has not been much referenced in the supply chain risk literature. Perhaps, because Peter Finch is not an academic, but a management consultant, and because there is very little academic literature in his reference list, hence not worth mentioning? I don’t think so. This article can very well stand on its own and excellently explains the role that SMEs have in adressing risks in supply chains

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Happy Holidelays!

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Revised on: 2015-09-11

The idea for this post came from a question on Linkedin: Holidays = Holi.delays? One thing is the usual Christmas/New Year slowdown. Add to that Global Warming suddenly giving the Copenhagen Agreement the cold shoulder, almost literally, causing severe weather all over Europe, the UK, and the United States, leaving travellers stranded on the Eurostar trains under the English Channel, prompting a major rethink of Eurostar’s customer service. People were stuck at airports like Frankfurt, Germany or Luton, UK. It’s the same scene everywhere, chaos, chaos and chaos and lots of people desperate to get home for the holidays. But what about their Christmas presents?

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Book Review: HBR on Crisis Management

Revised on: 2015-09-26

Close calls and near misses are not unusual in the business world, but how do companies deal with them? Published in 1999, the Harvard Business Review on Crisis Management is my third post on the Harvard Business Review Paperback Series, not that I intend to review all 73 of them. But this book reflects much of what is on my mind these days. I’ve had this book on my bookshelf for some time now, and I was planning on a review later this month, but the news on SAAB’s demise compelled me to move up my review in my posting schedule. The closure of SAAB is a major crisis by all standards, and is a fitting reminder that this 10-year old book will never go out of date. Why and how do some companies survive, and some not? This book sheds some light on this.

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SAAB no more…

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Revised on: 2011-03-22

What do you when your major customer goes bust? How do you cope with finding a new business partner? How do you react when a major competitor is no more? I don’t know, but I guess many businesses catering to SAAB in Trollhättan in Sweden will be asking these questions in the next couple of days. Well, they’ve had a year to prepare for SAAB’s demise. Who would have thought that when GM bought SAAB in 1989, that it would take no more than 20 years for GM to run SAAB into the ground, taking with it 60 years of proud Swedish car manufacturing history. SAAB is history, but what will happen to its supply chain?

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Critical: Beer Distribution

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Revised on: 2015-09-11

I’m not in the habit of making Friday a day for funny blog posts, but today’s article highlights a very interesting issue: Beer distribution is a sector that will be highly affected by a supply chain disruption…in the UK. You could even say that beer distribution is part of the UK critical infrastructure. At least, that’s the impression I have after reading McKinnon, Alan (2006). Life Without Trucks: The Impact of a Temporary Disruption of Road Freight Transport on a National Economy. Seriously, the article is about so much more. It shows how dependent our Just-In-Time-society has become on road transport, and what sectors that are most dependent on road transport. Transportation disruption should thus be part of any business continuity plan.

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Catastrophic events in supply chains

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Revised on: 2015-09-26

After studying supply chain risk research for some time I have begun to realize that much of the supply chain risk literature lacks direction and that each researcher or strand of researchers have their own presuppositions as to what supply chain risk is and how it should be addressed. In Knemeyer, A. M., Zinn, W. & Eroglu, C. (2009) Proactive planning for catastrophic events in supply chains, fortunately, there is a clear direction for further research and practical application as to how companies can evaluate and plan for catastrophic risk in supply chains.

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Hard Drive Recovery and Business Continuity

Revised on: 2015-09-09

Having access to the most up-to-date business information is vital to any business. That is why you should back up your data regularly. Data backup and data recovery are major ingredients of any business continuity plan. Do you regularly back up vital business information? Not? Well, maybe hard drive recovery may save the day for you after all, should the worst thing happen: your hard drive crashes or is destroyed when you most need it. That is when hard drive repair may come to your rescue.

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BBC World Debate: Disasters – Prepare or React?

Revised on: 2015-09-11

Should we actually bother to spend time and money on disaster mitigation, or should we rather focus on preparing for disaster recovery? Is re-active better than pro-active? The BBC World News has an interesting program called the world debate, that puts the important questions to those in the spotlight, and usually this is not the most exciting program. It’s a panel discussion, where representatives from global politics, finance, business, the arts, media and other areas come together and discuss various matters. More often than not, for the few and selected, but not for the many, and not for me. This morning, however, the topics was disasters and risks, and instead of switching off, as I usually do, I kept watching, and I was taken aback by the diversity of the arguments.

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Resilience revisited

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Revised on: 2015-12-02

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. Today, I will take a closer look at a criticality/preparedness matrix with a third susceptibility dimension added to it, as presented in the New Zealand research project Resilent Organisations, a project that has given me plenty of food for thought for my own research in assessing and analyzing resilience.

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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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Book Review: Managing Risk and Resilience in the Supply Chain

Revised on: 2015-10-14

This book is a gem. To me. Where Helen Peck in her article Reconciling supply chain vulnerability, risk and supply chain management takes a holistic academic perspective on supply chain risk and business continuity, the late David Kaye in his book Managing Risk and Resilience in the Supply Chain takes on a holistic business perspective to explain the concept of the extended supply chain. Seldom have I read a book that captured my attention from the beginning to the end. It is not a textbook for the academic, nor is it a handbook for the manager, but it is an easy read.

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Supply Chain Risk Management – as seen from Space

Revised on: 2015-09-29

Is it possible to reconcile supply chain vulnerability, risk and supply chain management with corporate governance, business continuity, national security and emergency planning? In a 2006 article, Reconciling supply chain vulnerability, risk and supply chain management, by Helen Peck, she attempts to do just that, hence my analogy of looking down at supply chains from Space – in order to really see the big picture. Because, as far as supply chain risk goes, some, if not all, stakeholders are found far beyond the individual supply chain and Helen Peck does an excellent job at explaining why.

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Agile Business Continuity

Revised on: 2015-09-10

The other day I came across a new term: Agile Business Continuity, on the blog of Paul James, agilecontinuity.org. The coupling of the term agile with business continuity aroused my curiosity and I decided to dig deeper into what this blog was really about. I discovered that was a blog that is well worth reading and I think that the word agile really captures the essence of what business continuity management (BCM) is about in the first place and I will explain why I think so.

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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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The 2009 Nordic Business Continuity Symposium

Revised on: 2015-09-09

I guess this will be THE gathering of who’s who in the Nordic Business Continuity commuity, and I wish I could be there, listen to the speakers, exchange ideas and simply, be inspired. The 2009 Nordic Business Continuity Symposium. And it’s right at my doorstep, well almost, at least it’s in my home country. The third Nordic Business Continuity Symposium to be held in Oslo, Norway on the 23rd April 2009 at Telenor Fornebu, Expo Building. For those of you who remember some history, Fornebu used to be Oslo’s main airport until 1998, almost in the middle of the city, when they moved it to Gardermoen, some 40km north of Oslo. Progess…

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Risky Thinking

Revised on: 2011-03-11

This is a reciprocal gesture towards Michael Z. Bell, who is kind enough to list me in the blogroll on his Risky Thinking blog, as I just found out the other day. Michael is a Business Continuity consultant currently based in Ottawa, Canada, and his business website (and blog) presents current information and opinions on business continuity, disaster recovery, risk assessment, and business impact analysis. riskythinking.com contains many articles on Business Continuity and Risk Management. Obviously I cannot make a post on my blog about every website that lists me one way or the other, but this one of the more interesting websites I have seen lately.

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The Business Continuity Institute

Revised on: 2015-09-10

The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) was established in 1994 to enable individual members to obtain guidance and support from fellow business continuity practitioners. The BCI currently has over 4000 members in 85+ countries. I came across this website while searching for this book on Managing Risk and Resilience in the Supply Chain. What does the Business Continuity Institute actually do?

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Fewer suppliers mean fewer choices for consumers

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Revised on: 2015-09-09

The financial crisis has created an supply chain crisis, says The Economist. As demand for cheap goods from China collapses in the West, one by one Chinese manufacturers go bust, which means that many companies are left without suppliers. What used to be a banking crisis is now a manufacturing crisis and may soon be a supplier crisis.

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