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.
Perhaps this research by Pero et al. can support small and medium sized companies with the design and redesign of its supply chain network.
The goal of the study was to analyze the connection between topological features of the supply chain and the resulting supply chain performance.
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.
A very interesting part of Supply Chain Risk Management deals with the impact of uncertainty on the supply chain design process. Van der Vorst and Beulens (2002) address this topic, and focus on the redesign of supply chains.
They claim that sources of uncertainty can be a key driver for chain redesign and after analyzing the literature and own research (case study) they present a tool for supply chain redesign where the sources of uncertainty support the selection of the relevant strategy.
Supply Chain Risk manifests itself in many ways. Today the German airlines restored their regular flight schedule again after six days of no or limited air traffic, after the latest eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull vulcano on Iceland.
The consequences of such events only rarely become evident, but in the background emergency plans have to be executed (or developed).
The CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly just published their first issue for 2010. One of the articles deals with the rising interest in reducing working capital using the example of Kraft Foods.
As well as other companies Kraft already had prior cash flow initiatives, where they analyzed their WC positions: payables, receivables, inventory, and capital expenditures.
Today I want to have a look at “Design and operation of distribution centres within agile Supply Chains” by Peter Baker (2008; Cranfield University).
The main part of the article describes the results of a survey conducted with nine business units to assess challenges and measures for supply chain agility.
Agility
is defined as “management concept centered around responsiveness to dynamic and turbulent markets and customer demand”. But it also involves exploiting these changing markets to take advantage from it.
The article “Aligning Supply Chain Strategies with Product Uncertainties” by Hau L. Lee is a good starting point for SCRM, since it combines a simple, business ready framework for two major supply chain risks.Furthermore it includes many examples to reinforce the theoretical framework.
