Tag Archives: supply chain resilience

Robustness, resilience, flexibility and agility

Revised on: 2015-10-04

Several “buzzwords” have been linked to supply chain risk management (SCRM) in various ways: robustness, flexibility, agility and resilience. These concepts are often confused, and thus, warrant further explanation. They are distinctively different, and which strategy that works best would depend not only on the supply chain in question as a whole, but also which part of the supply chain that may be vulnerable. That is why it is useful to look at what sets one apart from the other.

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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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Interpreting Resiliency

Revised on: 2015-09-03

In yesterday’s post on Freight Transportations Systems Resilience I mentioned Kelly Pitera and her Master’s thesis, Interpreting Resiliency: An Examination of the Use of Resiliency Strategies within the Supply Chain and Consequences for the Freight Transportation System, where she explored and evaluated resiliency efforts currently being used by importing enterprises, focusing on goods movement within the supply chain. Today I will take a closer look at his thesis since it comes up with a novel and conceptually intriguing perspective on strategies for supply chain resilience.

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What is Freight Transportation System Resilience?

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Revised on: 2015-09-09

Resilience is the new buzzword in Supply Chain Management, and has slowly trickled into transportation research as well. When attending the TRB Annual Meeting in January this year, to present my paper on Supply Chain Disruptions in Sparse Transportation Networks, I came across a couple of interesting papers which I will review in my upcoming posts. First up is Structuring a definition of Resilience in the Freight Transportation System by Chilan Ta, Kelly Pitera and Anne Goodchild from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. What I enjoyed with this paper was their holistic approach towards resilience, including all major stakeholders.

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Supply Chain Disruptions – Does Location Matter?

Revised on: 2011-08-03

How are companies located in sparse transport networks affected by supply chain disruptions? Here is a copy of the paper I presented at TRB2009, the Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting, in Washington, DC, 11-15 January 2009. The paper was presented in a poster session and included as a full paper in the conference proceedings. For your convenience, both the paper and the poster are included below.

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TRB 2009 – are you going there, too?

Revised on: 2011-03-29

Are you presenting at the TRB 2009, the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting? Personally I consider presenting an article at TRB as only inches away from having an article published in an academic journal. The reason is that you have to submit a full paper, not just an abstract, which is then fully peer reviewed by at least three referees, thus ensuring the quality of the paper. Below is the abstract of a paper I will present at TRB2009, the Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting, in Washington, DC, 11-15 January 2009.

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Ericsson versus Nokia – the now classic case of supply chain disruption

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Revised on: 2015-11-20

When faced with a supply chain disruption, proactive and reactive supply chain risk management can in fact make or break a company’s existence. One of the most famous (or rather infamous) cases is the fire at the Philips microchip plant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2000, which simultaneously affected both Nokia and Ericsson. However, both companies took a very different approach toward the incident, and in hindsight, clearly displayed how to and how not to handle supply chain disruptions.

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Overcoming locational disadvantage

Revised on: 2011-08-08

Following up my previous post, Sparse transportation networks – a recipe for supply chain disruptions?, when it comes to a business’ physical location in relation to the functioning of the supply chain, obviously there are good locations and bad locations. Can a business’ organization compensate for that? Yes – by either structuring its supply chain or honing its organization, thus going from badly located to well located and from badly prepared to well prepared.

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Sustainability means less vulnerability?

Revised on: 2015-10-24

Does sustainability improve a a company’s resilience towards supply chain vulnerabilities? Recently, in my research on supply chain vulnerability, I’ve come across the term sustainable supply chains. Curious as I am, and easily distracted by related topics, I decided to do some more digging, and this is what I came up with.

What are sustainable supply chains?

There are numerous definitions of the terms ‘Sustainable’ and ‘Supply Chain’, but in essence, this is a supply chain where the responsible manufacturer and retailer takes precedence over the green consumer. It is a supply chain, where resources are not just consumed but also replenished, and where business decisions consider long-term overall environmental and societal impacts. It’s not the opposite of just about business, but it is also not just about environment. It’s about

Profitability
Yes, we need to make money, but we should do so in a responsible way.
Accountability
Whatever we do, we will be held accountable for doing so.
Community
How can our business benefit the community (more than just providing jobs and tax money)?
Environment
Does our business harm the environment in any way?
Sustainability
Do we simply consume, or do we also replenish?

Conclusion

A sustainable supply chain is not primarily seeking to maximize profits.

It may not necessarily be less susceptible to disruption, but nonetheless, a disruption in a sustainable supply chain may be less likely to wreck widespread havoc, since a sustainable supply chain is not streamlined for profit, but is streamlined for resilience.

Links

sustainable-supplychain.com: Sustaina bility is free
The Sustainable Supply Chain Council: The Sustainable Supply Chain Project

Related posts

husdal.com: Sustainable supply chains

America’s Crumbling Infrastructure

Revised on: 2015-11-17

My daily morning routine includes a cup of coffee while watching the World Business Report on BBC World News. Today they had a special report on America’s crumbling and failing infrastructure. The 2005 Report Card for America’s infrastructure issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) leaves no doubt: It’s a D. Is America’s critical infrastructure in critical condition?

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Drivers of supply chain vulnerability

Revised on: 2015-09-10

In 2005, the topic of supply chain vulnerability was still a relatively unexplored territory, though it was already in its ascendancy to becoming one of the major areas of management research. In her article Drivers of supply chain vulnerability: an integrated framework, Helen Peck identifies four drivers of supply chain vulnerability, based on an exploratory and empirically grounded case study of commercial supply chains.

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How to Design Mitigation Capabilities

Revised on: 2015-09-26

There hasn’t been a literature review on this blog for a while, so it’s time to pick up where I left. Jumping from 1997 in review of Asbjørnslett’s “Assess the vulnerability of your production system” to 2007 in today’s review, I can tell that supply chain research has made a big leap forward. Today’s article presents six propositions that relate the severity of supply chain disruptions to supply chain design characteristics and supply chain mitigation capabilities, illustrating the connections between supply chain risk, vulnerability, resilience, and business continuity planning.

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Assess the vulnerability of your production system

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Revised on: 2015-09-08

So far I have reviewed “international” literature and web sites, and it is only fitting that now it is time for the Norwegian “domestic” literature to be reviewed. Assess the vulnerability of your production system was written back in 1997, by Bjørn Egil Asbjørnslett and Marvin Rausand, both now high-profile academics within risk analysis in Norway.

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Sheffi’s disruption profile

Revised on: 2011-02-25

There is a figure in the book The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage by Yossi Sheffi that every supply chain risk manager (or even every CEO for that matter) should take note of: the disruption profile. This is tell-tale illustration of what happens when supply chains are disrupted and businesses are impacted. They may, or may not, be able to bounce back to where they were before the event. The survivability of the company depends solely on the company’s resilience towards the disruption.

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Book review: Supply Chain Risk Management

Revised on: 2015-09-09

Edited by Robert B. Handfield, the book Supply Chain Risk Management: Minimizing Disruptions in Global Sourcing (Resource Management), is not what I thought it would be. Looking at the cover I expected a richly and colorfully illustrated handbook. It is not. I have to say that I am actually rather disappointed at this book, and I will tell you exactly why. That said, it is far from worthless, by all means, and there are many things that are worth reading, but it’s just not what I expected.

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Building a secure and resilient supply chain

Revised on: 2015-09-09

Are you gambling with your supply network? You should be aware that the supply network is inherently vulnerable to disruption and the failure of any one element in it could cause the whole network to fail. Current trends call for a supply network design that is both secure and resilient; that means a supply network that has advanced security processes and procedures in place, while at the same time being resilient enough to respond to unexpected disruptions and restore normal supply network operations.

In their article, “Building a secure and resilient supply chain“, James B. Rice and Federico Caniato point at a number of actions and responses to achieve supply chain resilience.

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Defining and Measuring Economic Resilience

Revised on: 2011-04-19

Economic resilience, as defined a paper published by the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), refers to the inherent and adaptive responses to hazards that enable individuals and communities to avoid some potential losses. It can take place at the level of the firm, household, market, or macroeconomy.

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Robustness, flexibility and resilience

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Revised on: 2015-12-02

In a previous paper, back in 2004, I discussed the issue of Flexibility and robustness as options to reduce risk and uncertainty. Since then a new term has emerged: resilience, and today I would like to compare these three terms. Robustness is the ability to accommodate any uncertain future events or unexpected developments such that the initially desired future state can still be reached. Flexibility is the ability to defer, abandon, expand, or contract any investment towards the desired goal. Resilience is the ability of a system to return to its original state or move to a new desirable state after being disturbed.

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Three steps to make your supply chain less vulnerable

Revised on: 2011-05-06

Some time ago, Jeff Karrenbauer, CEO of Insight Inc., a top international provider of supply chain planning solutions for the world’s foremost companies, wrote an article on How to Audit, Analyze, and Mitigate Supply Chain Vulnerability. The article makes a strong case for every CEO of any company to demand a comprehensive supply chain risk audit and a corresponding set of mitigation strategies immediately and wait until after disaster strikes only to realize that “we should (or could) have known better”. To make the supply chain more resilient, businesses need to do more than just think about the problem; they must prepare to act effectively.

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Book Review: Supply Chain Risk Management

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Revised on: 2011-03-12

This excellent book by Donald Waters, Supply Chain Risk Management: Vulnerability and Resilience in Logistics, offers a comprehensive overview of many important issues in managing supply chain risk. More than 15 case studies and a straightforward hands-on practical approach make this book an enjoyable read. I bought this book as a text book, and as such it does a great job. It is perhaps not so well suited for the academically inclined, or for researching supply chain risk, or perhaps it is indeed, as it lets you not forget the real world and its real problems.

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