Jan Husdal

Robustness, flexibility and resilience in the supply chain

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. 

Book Review: Supply Chain Risk Management

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 almost forgot that I bought this book as a text book. This book is written with the manager in mind, and is interspersed with examples from real life, along with calculations and illustrations that explain the concept in a manner that is practical and easy to follow even if you know nothing about supply chain management theory, common sense is all it takes. I highly recommend this book for anybody who wishes to learn the principles of supply chain risk management and put them into practice in one's own business. Worth the price? YES!

Why we need to think the unthinkable

Immediately after September 11, 2001, "critical infrastructure" and "vulnerability" seemed to be the new buzzwords. More recently "resilience" has been added to that list, and for a good reason. In a business sense, resilience is the ability to recover from any unforeseen event and how quickly one can return to normal day-to-day operations. Probably the most vulnerable and most critical infrastructure in our time are global computer networks, such as the Internet.In an article in the Enterprise Resilience Management Blog, highlights how the key to resilience is not only understanding how systems work but how they break, and how being able to think outside of the proverbial box and seeing potential challenges before they emerge is one of key elements in building enterprise resilience. To think the unthinkable, to plan for the unthinkable is maybe not what is most on people's mind and more often than not, it is only after a crisis that our thinking shifts. Then however, it may be too late.

How New Zealand develops resilient organisations

As our infrastructure and organisations become ever more networked and interdependent there is a growing need to focus on managing overall system risk. In particular, there is a need to focus not only on the vulnerability of our systems to failure, but also on our ability to manage and minimise the impact of any failures. New Zealand has realised this and is currently halfway through a six year research project designed to assist organisations in recovering their economic competitiveness after hazard events.

There is a load of information the Resilient organisations project home page: research reports, new findings, publications, events and conferences. Maybe not so supply chain or transport-related, but well worth a look. Resilience is applicable anywhere. Their newest research report is just out:

Resilience Management: A framework for assessing and improving the resilience of Organisations.

Read it here.