Tag Archives: transportation disruption

Transport Network Disruption

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Revised on: 2015-09-12

Today is my last day at work as Researcher at Møreforsking Molde. It is a sad day, because I am leaving a very exciting field, namely supply chain risk, but also a joyous day, because I am returning to a field I left 5 years ago, namely transport vulnerability. From here I head off into a new direction, as announced earlier, where I will be Senior Adviser in Societal Security and Emergency Preparedness issues to the South Region of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration. To mark the switch from supply chain risk to transport vulnerability – which has always been a minor part of this blog but will now become the major part – here is paper devoted to that very topic.

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Wintry disruptions…again

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Revised on: 2011-03-22

Winter has come early to Europe this year. Very early. While it is not unusual to have a prolonged cold spell in January or February in this neck of the woods, as we did last year, having it in November is rather uncommon. Snow has covered much of Europe that hasn’t seen snow in winter for years,with widespread ramifications for all sorts of transport. Traffic all over Europe as been hit hard, and many rail services in the UK rail have simply been cancelled, the BBC reports. This has truly been the coldest November on record, at least in Norway. Whatever happened to global warming? Are cold winters the new and coming supply chain risk?

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WCTR 2010

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Revised on: 2015-09-12

Are “bad” locations synonymous with “bad” logistics? That is the title of my presentation at the World Conference on Transport Research, WCTR 2010, in Lisbon, Portugal, this week. Norway, unlike much of central Europe, has a very sparse transportation network with few mode options (rail, road, sea or air) and few link options within each mode. How does that impact on logistics operations and how do Norwegian freight carriers handle transportation disruptions?

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Volcanic Ash Cloud Day 5

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Revised on: 2015-09-12

Today is Day Five of the infamous Iceland volcanic ash cloud disruption. What just a week ago was a highly improbable scenario has settled in to become a daily routine…almost. Was this really one of these damned (Pardon my French) Black Swan Events…or was it a Predictable Surprise we should have been aware of? While it is fair to assume that volcanic eruptions are in the business continuity plans of most airlines, it is probably not so fair to assume that 5 days of sudden air traffic restrictions is in the business continuity plans of most companies reliant on frequent air travel. Perhaps it should have been. For sure it will be – from now on.

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Today’s transport disruption: volcanoes

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Revised on: 2015-09-12

I haven’t had a “In the news” post for quite some time, but now Norway and much of Northern Europe are facing a major supply chain disruption: The shutdown of all air traffic because of a volcano eruption on Iceland causing an ash cloud to drift into European airspace. The eruption under a glacier in the Eyjafjallajoekull area of Iceland is the second in Iceland in less than a month, but this is the first time it has affected air traffic beyond its own borders. While air is only one of the four modes of transportation for supply chains, it is probably the mode that has the most expensive implications because it is often used for high-value goods. 

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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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Less supply chain disruptions with vendor managed inventory?

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Revised on: 2015-09-03

How does a traditional supply chain compare to a vendor managed inventory supply chain when it comes to performance during disruptions? In her 2005 paper, The impact of transportation disruptions on supply chain performance, Martha Wilson found out, not surprisingly, that vendor managed inventory (VMI) fares better than the traditional retail managed inventory, even when looking at the whole supply chain: Raw Material Supplier – Tier 2 Supplier   – Tier 1 Supplier  – Warehouse – Retailer – Customer.

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