Blog Archives

Taleb, Hamel, Holling…and I

I really should no longer be so surprised that my idea of how to differ robustness from flexibility from agility from resilience resonates with quite a number of people, including Si Alhir.

Posted in BLOGS and WEBSITES
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Am I making an impact?

Robustness. Flexibility. Agility. Resilience. One of my concepts that I have found cited more recently is what started out 11 years ago, and what later became in my mind the perfect illustration of these four terms.

Posted in my BLOGGING
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Book Review: Operations Rules

This book is about the principles, frameworks and processes that enable the aligning of a company’s specific customer value proposition with its operations strategy.The book is built around 33 rules that cover all possible aspects of supply chain operations and management, and that are placed throughout the eleven chapters of the book.

Posted in BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
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Adaptation versus Transformation

Resilience. A key ingredient in supply chain risk management. Also a key ingredient in logistics risk management. Cognitive resilience, behavioral resilience and contextual resilience must all come together for a resilient enterprise to emerge.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS
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Contingent flexibility

Can contingency planning increase flexibility and minimize risk exposure to supply chain disruptions?

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Supply Chain Flexibility in Strategic Networks

What fascinates me with this paper are (1) the parameters defining supply chain flexibility: Transparency, Simplicity, Responsiveness/Agility and Security/Reliability, and (2) flexibility potentials: Structural, Technological and Human flexibility potentials.

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A conceptual model of Supply Chain Flexibility

What do you do when you find two research papers by the same three authors, published the same year, in two different journals, with almost the same title?

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Sheffi’s Resilient Enterprise and supply chain risk

Building a resilient enterprise is an enterprise-wide undertaking that is about so much more than simply preparing a company for disruptions.

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Risks in virtual enterprise networks and supply chains

Conceptual in its approach and drawing from other areas of research, this paper introduces four distinct groups of VENS, namely Constrained, Directed, Limited and Free VEN, and concludes that VEN risk management can and should learn from supply chain risk management.

Posted in my PUBLIC PRESENCE
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Supply chain flexibility – a complete literature review?

Someone had to come up with this, it was just a matter of time, and it is no suprise that this article comes from India, one of the major providers of global outsourcing for many industries.

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Robustness, resilience, flexibility and agility

These concepts are often confused, and thus, warrant further explanation. They are distinctively different.

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Agile Business Continuity

The other day I came across a new term: Agile Business Continuity, on the blog of Paul James, agilecontinuity.org. It is 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.

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Robustness, flexibility and resilience

In a previous post I discussed the issue of Flexibility and robustness to reduce risk and uncertainty. Since then a new term has emerged: resilience, and today I will take a look at that.

Posted in THIS and THAT
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Flexibility and robustness as options to reduce risk and uncertainty

This paper will first present the main risks that are facing any company. Then, the available options to reduce these risks will be considered. Finally, in relation to these risks, flexibility and robustness will be introduced as a tool to handle uncertainties (risks).

Posted in THIS and THAT
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ARTICLES and PAPERS
Pyramidal thoughts
A promising title with promising content? Perhaps. If you are a supply chain or logistics profession[...]
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-o[...]
BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
Transportation Hazards
This is an updated and extended review of  the Handbook of Transportation Engineering by Myer Kutz ([...]
Book review: Networks and Algorithms
If you are into network analysis of any kind, this book teaches you the basics. As the name implies,[...]
REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
How New Zealand develops resilient organisations
Is New Zealand better prepared for a disaster than other countries? As our infrastructure and organi[...]
Creating the resilient supply chain
This blog is about supply chain risk, business continuity and transport vulnerability, and while I h[...]
from HERE and THERE
MFworks Tutorial
MFworks has evolved from MAPFactory, originally designed by C. Dana Tomlin, the father of map alge[...]
Supply Chain Risk Management 2008
Supply Chain Risk Management 2008, 3rd & 4th November 2008, World Trade Centre, the Netherlands[...]