Tag Archives: supply chain management

Supply Chain and Transport Risk

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Revised on: 2012-03-07

In our interconnected world, safety, reliability and efficiency can only be secured through collaboration between industries and government. This is the theme of a recently published report titled New Models for Addressing Supply Chain and Transport Risk. Written in collaboration with Accenture and published as an initiative of the Risk Response Network with the World Economic Forum, the report highlights the urgent need to review risk management practices to keep pace with rapidly changing contingencies facing the supply chain, transport, aviation and travel sectors.

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Supply Chain Continuity

Revised on: 2015-09-10

Many business owners will have come across the term business continuity, and many supply chain owners will have come across the term supply chain risk management. However, the term supply chain continuity is still a rather unexplored topic, gathering mere 45000 search results on Google, while business continuity has no less than 10 million results. But isn’t that what supply chain risk management is all about, namely supply chain continuity? Well, here’s a book that most certainly thinks so: A Supply Chain Management Guide to Business Continuity by Betty A Kildow, showing how a well-functioning supply chain is the key to a well-functioning business.
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CNN: The Gateway

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Revised on: 2011-08-28

Hosted by news anchor Becky Anderson, the CNN Gateway is a series that goes behind the scenes of the world’s major transport hubs, revealing the logistics that keep goods and people moving. We may not always give it much thought, but suply chains are all around us, and logistics is what makes the world tick. Our global world would not be possible without these hubs, the technology they emply and the people who work there. Even if you consider yourself fairly knowledgable in logistics and supply chain management, I bet there are still new things to learn from watching this series, and this post will present some of the highlights.

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Theory versus Practice

Revised on: 2015-09-03

What happens when theory meets practice? Theory fails and practice wins? In academia, more often than not, developing new groundbreaking theories is what is worth pursuing, because it is academically challenging, let alone meriting, despite these theories being practically irrelevant or not offering real(business)-life implications. Nowhere is the outcome of this research-versus-practice debate more important than in the supply chain realm. So say Stanley E Fawcett and Matthew A Waller in Making Sense Out of Chaos: Why Theory is Relevant to Supply Chain Research, an editorial in the Journal of Business Logistics, where they share their vision on how theory’s explanatory power should lead to better decision making, and not be seen as something apart from practice.

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SC Design and Management

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Revised on: 2015-09-01

More than 500-page heavy and laden with real-life examples and thoroughly calculated details, Designing and Managing the Supply Chain by David Simchi-Levi, Philip M Kaminsky and Edith Simchi-Levi this an excellent textbook that will teach you much more than just supply chain design and management. This book takes on a unique approach, and teaches you how the supply chain is an integrated part of any business, not something added to it to make the business work. The supply chain is the business; if it is not properly designed and managed, there is no business. Thus, this book is more than just about supply chain management, it is about business management in a wider sense. Unfortunately though, supply chain risk does not feature very prominently in this book.

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Retail SCM Summit 2011

Revised on: 2015-09-12

China. Perhaps the biggest arena for future development in logistics and supply chain management? It could be, because China is a rising economic powerhouse and on its way to become the world’s second largest consumer market after the United States. This means that domestic supply chains will be as if not even more important to China than international supply chains. With the government putting high priority on boosting domestic consumption, Chinese retailers need to understand and be able to cater to the increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumer. This is the backdrop for the Retail Supply Chain Management Summit 2011, hosted by the Global Leaders Institute in Shanghai, China on December 6 & 7, 2011, with the support of Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) and China Logistics Association (CLA).

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SCM: Past, Present and Future

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Revised on: 2015-10-24

What has been achieved, or rather: written, during a decade of academic research in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) field? A lot, obviously, but despite the considerable number of academic contributions, the literature is still very fragmented and although several studies purport to discuss supply chain issues, most of the existing research only examines one link of the chain, or more importantly only focuses on one ingredient in the supply chain performance mix. So say Larry Giunipero, Robert E Hooker, Sacha Joseph-Matthews, Tom E Yoon and Susan Brudvig in their 2008 article on A Decade of SCM Literature: Past, Present and Future Implications, where they investigate and categorize some 405 articles from 9 academic journals. Their findings are quite interesting.

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Supply Chain Risk: Product Design Changes

Revised on: 2015-09-12

Supply Chain Risk Management has emerged as an important source of competitive advantage and an effective method of reducing vulnerability in a supply chain. One vulnerability or risk that is often overlooked are product design changes to an already existing manufacturing process. That is the topic of a recent article by Yong Lin and Li Zhou titled The impacts of product design on supply chain risk: a case study. This a highly recommendable article for anyone thinking of studying risk management in supply chains.

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Supply Chain Performance Metrics

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Revised on: 2015-09-03

Financial key performance indicators are valuable because they capture the economic consequences of business decisions. Many of these business decisions are made as supply chain decisions, but many supply chain managers are perhaps not fully aware of how the supply chain metrics they juggle in their day to day operations impact the overall financial performance of they company they work in or work for, say, in the case of 3PL outsourcing. That is the topic of Linking Supply Chain Performance to a Firm’s Financial Performance, a recent article in the Supply Chain Management Review, where Priscilla Wisner, distinguished lecturer at the University of Tennessee, describes the “language of business” and how supply chain mangers can link their performance measure to business performance measures.

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3PL – a risk orchestrator?

Revised on: 2015-10-06

Historically, third-party logistics providers, or 3PLs, provided traditional logistics services, such as transportation and warehouse management and nothing more than that. However, the increased volume and scope of services demanded from 3PLs have given rise to their changing role, where today they are engaged in strategic coordination of their customers’ supply chain activities. So say Zach Zacharia, Nada Sanders and Nancy Nix in their most recent article on The Emerging Role of the Third-Party Logistics Provider (3PL) as an Orchestrator. Here they show how 3PLs have evolved from providing logistics capabilities to becoming orchestrators of supply chains that create and sustain a competitive advantage. The question is, what is it that defines an orchestrator? And, are 3Pls also becoming risk orchestrators?

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Point merge – the latest in aviation logistics

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Revised on: 2015-09-12

I’ve been travelling this week, which is why there haven’t been any posts for a while, and on my trip I experienced first hand the latest innovation in aviation logistics: Point Merge when approaching the destination airport. Aviation logistics is perhaps the wrong term as it is more correct to say the latest innovation in air traffic control, namely the sequencing of incoming and outgoing aircraft. Oslo airport in Norway was the first in the world to try out this new system, of course on the very day I was travelling. Apart from causing a great deal of delays and cancellations (and passenger frustrations) due to heavy restrictions on the number of aircraft movements allowed during the initial phases of this new system I can’t help but think about how nice it would be if all logistics or supply chain management issues were this easy to solve, at least on paper.

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Call for papers: Supply Chain Risk in China

Revised on: 2011-08-04

Supply chain and operations management are increasingly global, and China has become the world’s manufacturing centre. Is China also becoming the world’s hotspot for supply chain risk? I doubt so., although most of my own posts related to China have a negative connotation. That said, the International Journal of Applied Management Science (IJAMS) has issued a call for papers for a special issue on Supply Chain and Operations Management in China. Although I used “Supply Chain Risk Management in China” as the attention grabber for this post, that is only one of many topics for articles that could be submitted to this special issue, which welcomes both theoretical concepts, empirical research and practical case studies.

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Time is precious

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Revised on: 2015-09-30

Time. A highly valued asset in much of supply chain management and logistics operations. Time matters. Too little time due to delayed deliveries or late arrivals can cause havoc and supply chain disruptions, too much time due to production slack or early arrivals are equally annoying. Time is important and a supply chain works best when it is on time. For passenger trains it is definitely imperative to be on time and in 1944, Hans Hilfiker (1901-1993), a Swiss engineer and designer and employee of the Federal Swiss Railways, created a clock, which has since become known as the “Official Swiss Railways Clock”. This clock is a Swiss a national icon. It ensures that all trains run on time and that all stations show exactly the same time. This is the story of how the clock came about and what it means to me.

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How Effective Pallet Management Can Benefit the Full Supply Chain

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Revised on: 2011-03-04

One seemingly small link in the supply chain of goods is pallets; those little timber crates on which most goods are secured for movement and handling. However, despite their relatively small role, they are ever-present, which means changing the way we think about them and how we use them can have a massive knock on effect to the whole supply chain due to their sheer numbers. Without pallets, very few supply chains can function effectively, but pallets can also be a supply chain trouble spot. So what problems do pallets cause for the supply chain? This can be broken down into four main areas; their associated costs; their safety and hygiene; their ease of use and their environmental impact. Addressing, or at least reducing, these areas could have benefits that could be felt all the way down the supply chain. How?

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The supply chain of the future

Revised on: 2015-09-12

Many global supply chains are not equipped to cope with the world we are entering. Most were engineered, some brilliantly, to manage stable, high-volume production in China and other low-cost countries. But in a future when the relative attractiveness of manufacturing locations changes quickly—along with the ability to produce large volumes economically— such standard approaches can leave companies dangerously exposed. So say Yogesh Malik, Alex Niemeyer, and Brian Ruwadi in the McKinsey Quarterly of January 2011. Essentially, in the future, economies of scale need to be replaced by economies of flexibility in order to cope with the risks of turbulent and shifting sourcing and manufacturing opportunities, wherever they occur…and disappear again.

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The impact of supply chain glitches

Revised on: 2015-09-03

The other day I wrote about supply chains and disasters. Today I will deal with something that is much less catastrophic and write about supply chains and glitches. However, to the shareholders, a supply chain glitch may be just as disastrous (pun intended) as a supply chain disaster. In The effect of supply chain glitches on shareholder wealth from 2003, Kevin B Hendricks and Vinod R Singhal investigate the shareholder wealth effects of supply chain glitches that resulted in production or shipment delays, using a sample of 519 announcements made during 1989-2000. Here they find that glitch announcements on average decrease shareholder value by near 11%. How did they arrive at this value?

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It’s already happening…in Norway?

Revised on: 2015-09-12

The food supply chain. Did you know that 25% of the world’s food supply are lost because of spoilage during transportation? That’s what IBM claims in a commercial about how IBM is helping to build a smarter planet: “On a smarter planet, we can use tracking technology to track and trace our food as it makes its way through the supply chain from the farm to our table. IBM is helping companies all over the world monitor our food’s temperature, pinpoint contaminations faster, prevent spoilage, and ensure the safety of the food we eat. It’s already happening in places like Canada, Norway, and Vietnam.” My own Norway mentioned by IBM? I’ve got to see this…

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Control or laissez-faire?

Revised on: 2015-09-09

Maintaining a company’s competitive advantage depends on managing and controlling a global supply chain that is perhaps never static, and one major supply chain risk is that supply networks are constantly changing. Supply chains, once established, have become increasingly unpredictable in today’s global and highly dynamic business environment. No sooner have you mapped your supply chain end-to-end and devised a strategy for how to manage it, the chain changes on you – new and better suppliers emerge and new relationship configurations pop up. Perhaps not controlling, but letting things happen and letting supply networks emerge is the best management strategy? According to Supply networks and complex adaptive systems: control versus emergence by Thomas Choi, Kevin Dooley and Manus Rungtusanatham supply chain managers must appropriately balance how much to control and how much to let emerge.

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CALL for Papers: NOFOMA 2011

Revised on: 2015-09-12

NOFOMA is the network of Nordic researchers within the field of Logistics and Supply Chain Management and each year they host a conference on the latest research in logistics and supply chain management. NOFOMA 2011 will be hosted in Harstad, Norway, June 9-10, 2011. It may be a bit early, but the deadline for paper submission is only some two months away. While supply chain risk issues are not mentioned as a particular topic in the call for papers, I am sure that logistics risks and related subjects will be covered nonetheless. I have many times considered submitting a paper, and maybe this time, since the conference is on home turf, I should really do it. So, what are the hot trends for logistics and supply chain management research in 2011?

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