This Week in Supply Chain Management (19 / 2011)

This was week 19 in 2011. It was a very active week, with several good articles I’d like to recommend reading.

News

• From June 13th to the 15th there will be the “First Global Risk Network to Address Supply Chain Risk” by the New York University (NYU International Center for Enterprise Preparedness)
• As I hoped to see one or two weeks ago: The NY Times just published a “Case Study”-like report on the effects of the Japanese earth quake on US car makers (NY Times)
• The Guardian comments on the recently released, lower than expected financials of Toyota (Guardian)
• Other less public industries, like the micro controller business, are also affected by the disruption of their Japanese suppliers (EE Times)

Blogs

• Bob from @Risk wrote about a current survey on the Top Ten risks experienced by business leaders in 2011 (@Risk)
• I also recommend Bob’s article on the recent BCG study, which concludes that manufacturing may return to the US as China’s labor cost rise (@Risk)

Research / Studies

• There is a great interview with Stephan Wagner from the ETH Zurich on his paper “An empirical Examination of Supply Chain Performance along Several Dimensions of Risk” (which I reviewed here) over at Sciencewatch (Sciencewatch.com)
• Furthermore I found this guest comment by Takamitsu Sawa (president of the Shiga University, Japan) on the trade-off between profits and safety (Japan Times)

Company sponsored research

Two company sponsored studies surfaced this week, just if you are interested:

• Labor Management: Instill Accuracy, Efficiency, and Productivity (Aberdeen Group)
• Identifying Opportunities with Your Inbound Transportation (C.H. Robinson)

If this week’s long list of articles is still not enough, you can have a look at my articles from this week:

• Monday: Internet Induced Risks for global Supply Chains
• Wednesday: Case Study on Managing Disruptions in Supply Chains

Enjoy your weekend!