Blog Archives

Cry Wolf?

Why is it that we fear so much? Frank Furedi shows how the notion of all kinds of vulnerability and possibilistic (worst likely) risk thinking has dethroned probabilistic (most likely) risk thinking.

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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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The capability concept

Capability is an important measure in adressing vulnerabilities and in assessing resilience. Is there a way to quantitatively describe what capability entails?

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Maritime Vulnerability

Maritime transport is a vital backbone of today’s global and complex supply chains. Unfortunately, the specific vulnerability of maritime supply chains has not been widely researched. Perhaps because it is such an obvious part of today’s supply chains that it is not looked at specifically, and just assumed to be part of the wider picture.

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Vulnerability and resilience of transport systems

Essentially, risk management is all about mitigation, whereas adaptation lays the groundwork for resilience. Risk management is only about preparedness, response, and recovery. By adding adaptation to those three we also add resilience.

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Risk and Vulnerability in Virtual Enterprise Networks

Conceptual in its approach and drawing from other areas of research, this chapter 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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What goes into resilience?

Resilience, in essence, is bridging vulnerabilities by honing capabilities. Seldom have I seen such a comprehensive yet to the point article on supply chain resilience that satisfies both academia and the industry at the same time.

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Supply chain vulnerability: Mitigation strategies

Which mitigation strategy that works best when faced with which supply chain catastrophe? This is a paper that every supply chain manager should read, at least once.

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Risk versus vulnerability

In this paper safety and security are brought together in a unifying risk and vulnerability framework that covers both accidental and malicious events.

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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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Risk and resilience in maritime logistics

Risks in maritime supply chains are perhaps an underresearched area and consequently, the article outlines a rationale for why it is necessary to develop competence about risk, vulnerability and resilience management in maritime supply chains.

Posted in BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
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Risk & Vulnerability

Supply chains are increasingly becoming complex webs and networks and are no longer straightforward chains with just a few links between supplier and customer.

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Road Vulnerability

Today we are going back in time, to one of the seminal articles in road vulnerability. It is a conceptual paper that provides the basis for why road vulnerability needs to be a more important issue .

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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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Critical: Beer Distribution

Beer distribution is a sector that will be highly affected by a supply chain disruption…in the UK. You could even say that beer distribution is part of the UK critical infrastructure.

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Graph Theory to the rescue

While I know that Graph Theory has many applications, I never expected to see it in Supply Chain Management.

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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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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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BBC World Debate: Disasters – Prepare or React?

Should we actually bother to spend time and money on disaster mitigation, or should we rather focus on preparing for disaster recovery? Is re-active better than pro-active? To what extent can we really reduce the dangers from future disasters? Does investing in prevention divert funds from rescue efforts when disasters do occur?

Posted in THIS and THAT
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Resilience revisited

How many ways are there for defining vulnerability and criticality, really? Traditionally, risk matrixes have a likelihood/impact approach, but not always. Yesterday, I was examining a criticality/vulnerability matrix.

Posted in ARTICLES and PAPERS
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ARTICLES and PAPERS
Mitigating Supply Chain Vulnerability
I'm a quantitative researcher, so I usually shy away from journal articles with too many equations a[...]
Information Risk Management
Openness, partnering, trust and particularly sharing of information has often been cited as one way [...]
BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
Book Review - Fraud Risk
Last year I was approached by Gower Publishing and invited to review their Short Guides to Business [...]
Transportation Hazards
This is an updated and extended review of  the Handbook of Transportation Engineering by Myer Kutz ([...]
REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
Global Risk Reports
While waiting for the World Economic Forum Global Risk Report for 2009, the continuation of the Glob[...]
Supply Chain and Transport Risk
In our interconnected world, safety, reliability and efficiency can only be secured through collabor[...]
from HERE and THERE
ERP consultants: A nightmare
Kinaxis Suitemates
I'm an academic ... a transport economist who happened to stumble into supply chain management. Actu[...]
Practical Supply Chain Risk Management
Every once in while I come across articles written by leaders in the industry. that catch my attenti[...]