Blog Archives

Security and continuity of supply

Today’s paper describes how Finland views logistics and supply as important to national security and how the LOGHU project was created to develop a framework for identification and ranking of threats and corresponding countermeasures.

Posted in BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
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SAAB no more…

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? SAAB is history. What will happen to its supply chain?

Posted in THIS and THAT
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Call for papers: Risk Management in Supply Chains

The recent trends such as offshore manufacturing, lean sourcing and global outsourcing has considerably increased the risk exposure of firms and their supply chains, and operational research has become one of the most indispensable tools in business.

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Book Review: Managing External Risk

You don’t need to have an MBA to be enable to enjoy this book, common sense and curiosity about the inner workings of business decisions are enough. I learned a lot from this book.

Posted in BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
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Risk Management in Global Supply Chain Networks

Supply Chain Risks can be classified as either one of these three, Deviation, Disruption or Disaster, and can be approached using either a Preventive or an Interceptive approach; the former attempts to build in risk tolerance, the latter attempts to contain the damage or impact of an undesired event.

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Mitigating supply chain disruptions

Christopher Tang from UCLA talks about three strategies for building a robust supply chain, related to (1) supply, (2) product, and (3) demand.

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Blog Review: The Kinaxis Blog

Here is a high-quality blog for you, the Kinaxis Blog, or as they put it themselves: The 21st Century Supply Chain. And is it a correct tagline? Yes, I think so. The blog features Kinaxis executives and the occasional guest and provides insights on today’s supply chain trends and issues.

Posted in BLOGS and WEBSITES
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Book Review: Managing Supply Chain Risk and Vulnerability

Another book by someone from the ISCRIM gang? No, not this time, or perhaps, yes, after all, since several of the ISCRIM members have contributed to it. The book serves a twofold purpose: 1) Understanding and assessing risk in the supply chain, and 2) Decision making and risk mitigation in the supply chain.

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Risk and Uncertainty in Supply Chain Management

I am very much impressed with this extensive literature study on risk and uncertainty within Supply Chain Management. It is – by my judgement – better than Vanany et al. (2009).

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS
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Black Swan Events

Black Swan events – should we even bother? These events are practically impossible to predict, so instead of spending our efforts on quantifying and estimating them, maybe we should just let them happen?

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS
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Rigorous Risk Management

Risk management is emerging as a key focus area for corporations, especially in terms of the extended supply chain. As they take on expanded responsibilities for global sourcing, supply chain managers are also increasingly required to manage risk in terms of brand, reputation, and ethical sourcing, not just procurement and purchasing risks.

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Supply chain risk in turbulent environments

What is supply chain risk in turbulent environments really…simply old wine in new bottles or something profoundly new?

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What’s so special about this Paul Kleindorfer?

Apparently there must be something really special about Paul Kleindorfer. Otherwise there would be no reason for Morris A Cohen and Howard Kunreuther to write their tribute to him.

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Catastrophic events in supply chains

Finding the right facility location is difficult enough. Keeping it safe is even more difficult. One of the building bricks of the this article is the identification of so-called key supply chain locations.

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Risk management: core competence?

Blindly minimizing risk is a losing proposition in the long term, and uncertainty or risk are at the root of opportunity towards new profitable enterprises. Risk minimizing does not equal profit maximizing.

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Measuring supply chain risk management

There can be no generally valid risk for all types of supply chains, but risks must be defined from within the context of the supply chain that is the subject of analysis.

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Measuring supply chain risk management

Each individual supply chain is unique in certain respects and this uniqueness may require unique approaches to the management of the risks involved.

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Corporate vulnerability

In this study, Svensson investigates the areas, the causes and the contingency planning of corporate vulnerability in upstream and downstream supply chains.Corporate vulnerability in supply chains stems from time dependence, functional dependence and relational dependence.

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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.

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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
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ARTICLES and PAPERS
Next time in China: Guanxi
Today's post is an extension of what I wrote yesterday, in my review of what Fu Jia and Christine Ru[...]
When your supplier goes bust...
...what do you do? Is so-called supplier default something you have even thought about? And what if [...]
BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
What are Logistics Clusters?
This is a guest post by Professor Yossi Sheffi, Director, MIT Center for Transportation & Logist[...]
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[...]
REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
Supply Chain and Transport Risk
We are living in a new world of risk that is making this world unprecedentedly complex and challengi[...]
Stemming the rising tide
Are you are taking radically different actions than your peers when it comes to supply chain risk ma[...]
from HERE and THERE
The European Supply Chain & Logistics Summit
In the current financial downturn what should be - or what will be - on the mind of supply chain and[...]
Cost-Benefit Analysis – an essay about valuation problems
This paper introduces vulnerability as an important parameter for decision-support in cost-benefit a[...]