Submitted by Daniel Dumke on Mon, 2011-02-21 10:14
Paper
Your Infrastructure will kill you
Published In:
Chaos Communication Congress
Year:
2010
I was looking for more general insights into the topic on why systems fail. I stumbled on a talk of Eleanor Saitta from last years Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. There is a recording of the talk here and the slides for the talk can be obtained here.
Uncertainty can be categorized in continuous risk, more slowly changing patterns, and disruptions, which describe abrupt changes in a system.
Tomlin (2006) investigates the question which supply chain strategies perform best when dealing with the later.
Mitigation vs. Contingency Planning
From case studies analyzed in literature the author first deducts disruption management strategies used in practices. The summary can be seen in figure 1.
Stress tests are an acknowledged method to test systems under extreme conditions. The method is not only used in engineering (eg. Great picture of a Boing wing stress test (Guardian Eyewitness)), but also in business, most notably and in the banking industry. But can this method also be used to test supply chain designs?
We already know that supply chain disruptions can be quite costly, and have not only direct but also indirect effects (eg. on stock prices). So do all supply chain disruptions have the same effect on the focal company? Of course not, but what are the driving factors that influence the impact?
In their conceptual note Craighead et al. (2007) analyse the factors of the impact supply chain disruptions.
In last weeks article (Hendricks and Singhal, 2005) I described the effects of supply chain glitches on supply chain performance. This week should be viewed an update to that.
Submitted by Daniel Dumke on Wed, 2011-01-05 13:59
Paper
On The Quantitative Definition of Risk
Published In:
Risk Analysis
Year:
1981
What is risk anyway?
I read this paper already some time ago. It is very important to have a clear definition of the terms used in research. But from my previous experience I know that also in business a clear understanding of the different aspects of risks is important to stay consistent.
Supply Chain Risk Management is one way to look at risks within a company (and beyond). But there are broader and more narrow disciplines as well, with Business Continuity on the one end and Supply Chain Crisis Management on the other.
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.
Submitted by Daniel Dumke on Wed, 2010-09-08 08:02
Recently there were numerous discussions and speculations on the shrinking supply of rare earth elements.
Those elements are used in many different applications from hard disks over cars to iPods. Supply for the world demand is curently dominated by China, which delivers about 97 percent.
