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All posts in
Supply Chain Management

2008/09/16 One comment

Sustainability means less vulnerability?

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.

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2008/08/04 Leave a comment

From the back room to the board room - supply chain risk management

ResearchBlogging.orgSupply chain management used to be relegated to the logistics department of businesses and hardly thought of as matters concerning the top-level management. Similarly, risk management was handled by insurance specialists who concentrated on facilities, employees and shipping losses and security. However, in my opinion, risk and particularly supply chain risk should be an integral part of any board room discussion. Why?

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2008/07/19 Leave a comment

Supply Chain Disruptions - Does location matter?

Ferry "Tresfjord" in stormy weather, Molde-Vestnes

In regions or countries with sparse transportation networks or few transportation mode choices the structure or design of the supply chain, along with the organization and preparedness become important factors in determining if a company has an favorable or a unfavorable location. In locations with a sparse transportation network there are maybe not so many options as to setting up the supply chain; the supply chain is in fact constrained by a certain physical location. Does this make it more susceptible to disruptions?

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2008/07/10 Leave a comment

Book Review: Research Methodologies in Supply Chain Management

Is there something like the right research design for supply chain studies? I believe there is, and in Research Methodologies in Supply Chain Management it is more than likely that you too will find a research approach that will suit your needs. Every budding supply chain researcher (and senior researcher for that matter)  should read this book. Within the 36 chapters 70 authors bring together a rich selection of theoretical and practical examples of how research methodologies are applied in supply chain management.

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2008/07/06 Leave a comment

Supply Chain Visibility through Web Conferencing

It’s weekend and time for some reflections. Maybe slightly off-topic for this blog, but the other day I came across “Web Conferencing”, a feature-rich full web collaboration service, and it occurred to me how useful this tool is in Supply Chain Management. One of the core strategies in Supply Chain Risk Management is to increase Supply Chain Visibility, because optimizing individual links in a supply chain is of limited value if these individual links have little or no visibility of what is happening upstream and downstream. This will also assist in achieving Supply Chain Confidence, since all partners, stakeholders and operators within the Supply Chain are aware of each others whereabouts and doabouts, so to speak.

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2008/07/03 Leave a comment

Is there a distinctive Nordic approach to Logistics and Supply Chain Management?

8763002183sm_3Is there such a thing as a typically Nordic way of thinking within the field of Supply Chain Management? A new book is out, trying to answer that question: Northern Lights in Logistics & Supply Chain Management by Jan Stentoft Arlbjørn, Árni Halldórsson, Marianne Jahre, Karen Spens (eds.).  I came across this book while doing some Google searches on supply chain risk, ending up on www.interorgainisational.org, a site run by two university professors, Gyöngyi Kovács and Arni Halldorsson, and dedicated to showing a different side of logistics than the pure business and money focus it usually has. Halldorson is also a contributor to the book.

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2008/07/01 Leave a comment

eSourcingWiki - can it be trusted?

The other day I came across eSourcingWiki, “a global collaborative effort for supply management best practices and dynamic content creation.” Personally, I have access to a college library. Not everyone has, so can they learn from eSourcingWiki? Is this a place where I can put out my own research, or search for knowledge from others? Is the information academically sound and valid?

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2008/06/29 Leave a comment

Supply Chain Risk Management and Business Continuity Management

Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) has many similarities with Business Continuity Management (BCM). As companies sourced their materials from sources further and further away, and as customers were increasingly spread around the globe, the logistics chains grew more and more complex, the field of Logistics grew into Supply Chain Management.

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2008/06/27 Comments are closed

Location, location, location - Supply chain management in disruption-susceptible locations

Albeit many supply chains make use of more than one, if not all modes of transport, the vulnerability of the transportation network is of particular interest in countries or regions with sparsely populated areas, and hence, a sparse transportation network, often with only one mode of transportation available between population centers, meaning this centre can only be reached by either rail, sea, air or road. Having basically only one transportation link to the aforementioned population centers, it becomes extremely vulnerable to any disruption in the transportation system or supply chain, since in a possible worst-case scenario no suitable alternative exists.

The question then arises, how do companies or businesses located in such places adapt to the terms and conditions of their supply chain, how do they hedge against the risk of supply chain disruptions, how are they impacted if there is a disruption, is it possible to put a price tag to this, and who is ultimately paying the price for these supply chain insecurities, the company or the customer?

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2008/06/25 Leave a comment

A risky business? The top 10 challenges of offshoring

In A risky business? The top 10 challenges of offshoring the Director of Global Sourcing at EquaTerra, Sridhar Vedala, explores the top 10 challenges of offshoring today and provides suggestions on how to tackle them head on:

  1. Internal organisational barriers
  2. Choosing the right location
  3. Choosing the right supplier
  4. Cultural compatibility
  5. Procurement of hardware and software licences
  6. Loss of control and knowledge transfer
  7. Data security
  8. Building a retained organisation
  9. Controlling cost overruns
  10. Service providers failing to deliver

Let me briefly recap his main arguments for each of the 10 challenges:

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2008/06/20 Leave a comment

The difference between legal and illegal supply chains

ResearchBlogging.orgFor a budding researcher, other people’s PhD papers or dissertations can be a true inspiration and guide along the way. Unfortunately, such dissertations are often hard to find, simply because they more often than not do not appear in bibliographic searches, since they don’t always qualify as valid publications. Fortunately then that some universities keep track of the writings and presentations of their students, researchers or academic staff such that it appears in Google searches. That is how I found Antagonistic gateways in the transport network in a supply chain perspective by Daniel Ekwall, a student at the School of Engineering at University College of Borås, Borås, Sweden.

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2008/06/17 Leave a comment

Managing risk in global supply chains

The book Strategies for Building Successful Global Businesses, by the INSEAD-Wharton Alliance on Globalizing, contains 6 articles on managing risk and uncertainty. Today I will look at one of these articles that deserves further mentioning: Managing risk in global supply chains by Paul W. Kleindorfer and Luk N. van Wassenhove.

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