UK Infrastructure Resilience - This Week in Supply Chain Management (44 / 2011)

Yet another week. I finally handed in the first part of my dissertation thesis, of course just-in-time on the 31st. So right now I prepare the second part, with the results of my exploratory expert interviews on supply chain risk mitigation strategies and insights of a simulation study using agent based simulation.

This week, thinking about the case of Thailand, I also realized how a country’s level of infrastructure affects the individual companies risk. But also the individual risk management is important: When I was in Thailand this year (July), I asked the supply chain manager of a large retailer with a DC just north of Bangkok, what risks were on his priority list. I did explicitly ask for floods, but sadly, they were not on the list…

News

• The Financial Times had two nice articles on supply chain disruptions this week: “Do complex supply chains make you too vulnerable?” with a summary and lessons from the Thailand flooding and “Supply chain disruption: sunken ambitions” with interviews on how to mitigate supply chain risks. (FT: 1, 2, (free) registration required)
• Kyle Krug reports on recent disruptions at the port of Oakland and its impacts on supply chains and especially 3PLs. (Griffin Logistics)

Blogs

• Ken Simpson summarized a current infrastructure resilience initiative by the UK government, focussing on resistance, reliability, redundancy and response and recovery. (Contemplating)

Research

• GXS has a short summary of some of the results of the 2011 “Supply Chain Risks” study by the The Association for Operations Management (APICS). Companies are most vulnerable to natural disaster disruptions and missing information sharing. (GXS)

Also have a look at my related articles:

• On Monday I had a look at an open access book on supply chain management with several articles related to supply chain risk management: Supply Chain Management Book Review.
• And on Wednesday, I reviewed the Disaster and Crisis Pyramid.

Enjoy the weekend!