Mitigation strategies for supply chain risks have have been discussed in the literature for a long time now. Khan and Burnes (2007) mention several strategies like:
Multiple sources of supply vs single sourcing
Buffers
Risk sharing/knowledge transfer
Proactive supply management
But it seems difficult to assign a value and maximum cost for these strategies. Xu and Nizick (2009) are filling this gap.
Setting up the right partnerships is hard to do. There are multiple levels to the decision with which companies to setup formal relations and how deep this relationship should be? Christopher and Jüttner (2000) develop a framework for managing partnerships. The full paper can be found here.
Today I just want to highlight a short article from “The Conversation” blog at the Harvard Business Review for you to read. The article, which can be found here, was written by Harold Sirkin, senior parter at the Boston Consulting Group.
Many articles, including my own research show, that companies tend to focus largely on risk mitigation measures concerning the supply side. Only little is done to include demand side risks or demand side measures into the mitigation of supply chain risks. The study “Pricing During Disruptions: A Cause of the Reverse Bullwhip Effect” focusses on optimal pricing measures during a disruption. And so it helps to close the gap a little bit.
At this year’s HICL conference in Hamburg, I was able to present some of my own research. In the follow-up discussions several points were highlighted, especially focussing on the viability of supply chain wide cooperation and collaboration efforts and on the difficulties of doing a realistic quantification of supply chain risks.
Is there consensus about the role of product design as the leading function in the supply chain? Not yet! This article introduces the topic of integrating decisions in product and supply chain design and gives a short glimpse on the “how to implement” part.
How is new knowledge generated in the social sciences? One method is case study research.
Case Study
A case study is an in-depth investigation of a specific question regarding an individual research object, it can be differentiated using the following criteria:
Yet another paper on risk mitigation strategies. This time: How to reduce risks by improving confidence. You can find the complete paper of today in the web.
