At the moment I am focussing more on the interviews I am conducting for my research, so I am not reading as much anymore. I therefore try to select articles which are both useful for my research and my blog.
“Arcs of integration” is a concept developed by Frohlich and Westrook (2001) which describes the degree of integration of suppliers and customers within a Supply Chain.
Still too many cooperations do not analyze their supply networks using consistent and scientifically proven methods. Some already do. One case of a company (ABC) is described below.
This is the second contribution to my series on doctoral dissertations on Supply Chain Risk Management. An immense effort and dedication is spent on these works only to find the results hidden in the libraries. So the goal is raise interest in their research.
The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model has been developed by the Supply Chain Council to provide a best-practice framework for supply chain management practices and processes with the goal to increase performance.
SCOR
The SCOR model consists of five major process categories: Plan, Source, Make, Deliver and Return
Disruptions are a fact of life not only since the Supply Chain literature gained awareness of it. So some institutions in fact specialized on handling disruptions as their core competency.
The article “Responding to Disruptions in the Supply Network – from Dormant to Action” tries to transfer the knowledge and best practices present at the military and humanitarian organizations to Supply Chain Management.
One of the most published supply risk researchers is George A. Zsidisin. In his 2003 article he describes the characteristics of inbound supply that affect the perception of risk.
In his 2009 paper Brian Tomlin analyzes strategies to mitigate disruption risks in a three echelon supply chain.
Setting
Focus in his research is a single company, with its suppliers and customers. The objective is to maximize expected utility, while demand and supply are uncertain. There are two products available which can be used as substitutes. The time horizon for the decision maker is one season where the products can be sold.
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.
What do professionals in the domain of supply chain management think about disruptions? How do they prepare for them, how do they act when a disruption occurs?
Blackhurst et al. (2005) answer these questions in their work about “An empirically derived agenda of critical research issues for managing supply-chain disruptions”.The authors are using three different empirical methods to achieve this goal empirically: Case study, surveys and focus groups.
