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Flooding and iPhone - This Week in Supply Chain Management (36+37 / 2012)

Daniel Dumke — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 10:17:37 +0000

Let’s see if this new-biweekly publication pattern pays off. I think at lease the last two weeks produced some very interesting articles.

Articles

Just last week the new iPhone 5 has been announced. If you want to read a little bit more about the supply chain implications of its ultrafast global rollout, have a look at “Apple’s real iPhone 5 ace: Its supply chain” at ZDNet. (ZDNet)
Contemplating the effects of the hottest US summer in memory, The Guardian writes about the necessity to think beyond the supply chain when building a sustainable business. (Guardian)
Swiss Re claims that the losses related to floods now come close to those caused by earthquakes. “The $12 billion insured losses in Thailand really highlighted the potential for flood to cause extreme losses,” he says. “The insured losses corresponded to 1,800 percent of the country’s total annual property premium”. (Insurance Networking)

Already tweeted

René Descartes and supply chain management http://t.co/djF6UdPW
The Evolving Role of the Risk Professional: A Panel Discussion at the 2012 RIMS Canada Conference http://t.co/3M21FTtl
Hans Lessoe Shares LEGO’s Risk Management Strategy at the 2012 RIMS Canada Conference http://t.co/xvopyHO
For those who learn visually: Supply chain management infographics & more http://t.co/CdPwED1E

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Apple's Risk Management - This Week in Supply Chain Management (29 / 2012)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:15:43 +0000

This week there is one article and one conference I would like point out.

Article

The Risk Management Monitor has a short interview with Walter Isaacson on Steve Jobs’ approach to risk management at Apple, Inc. (RMM)

Conference

Have a look at the “4th Supply Chain Risk Management Seminar” by Icon Events on October, 25 & 26 in Barcelona. (Icon Events)

This week I already tweeted about:

IndustryWeek: Managing Currency Risk in the Supply Chain http://t.co/dWSLzjxB
Exploring a new strategy in Risk Management: Responsiveness http://t.co/NBF5u2gE

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Insurance Pro and Con - This Week in Supply Chain Management (25 / 2012)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 07:16:03 +0000

My hard drive just crashed. Well, one of two I use to store all a my private media. The disks were arranged as RAID 0. And the 0 already indicates that there is zero redundancy. So the data is gone.

Sure there is a backup, so nothing is really lost. Getting up and running again still will take at least until Sunday. The first thing I did was ordering a new disk on amazon. As soon as it arrives I will have to recreate my RAID and play back all of the data. A tedious and long process, since that’s something you don’t do every day…

So my lessons learnt: Never rely on a single weak link, especially if you are not at least prepared to fill the gap.

By the way. Since early 2011 I always buy the same disk by Samsung (HD204UI 2TB). And that’s the price development since then:
January, 2011: 80.39 EUR
July, 2011: 62.99 EUR
August, 2011: 60.99 EUR
June, 2012: 105.17 EUR

As you can see the price nearly doubled after the Thailand flooding. And that is nearly a year after the disruption.
But now let’s see what others did this week…

Articles

Apparently Apple is trying hard to defend its top position in supply chain rankings: AppleInsider reports that inspections have increased in number as well as in their depth. (AppleInsider)
Leaders in a new category: According to Market Watch Marsh Rick Consulting has been named best supply chain risk consulting services provider. (MarketWatch)
If you want to read more on Marsh, just have a look at yesterday’s post at Enterra Insights, where Stephen DeAngelis discusses a recent press release by Marsh and his stand on supply chain insurance and alternatives. (Enterra Insights).
The Risk Management Monitor found a video by Zurich Financial. Larry Collins explains the cost of computer hacking. (RMM)

Enjoy your weekend!

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Supply Chain Apps for iPhone and iPad

Daniel Dumke — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:17:29 +0000

Some say that tablet computers are a great fit, not only for games and surfing the web, but for business applications as well.

But since the tablet computer is not much more than a big screen, software is key to a productive use of the pad.

To test this hypothesis I picked the iPad as an example for a tablet computer, because:

I own one,

there are more apps available than for any other platform,

the apps quality is often better.

Magazines

First, there are several apps by magazines, which often can also be read in paper or online. I picked three supply chain related examples:

Supply Chain Quarterly: The app features free issues of the CSCMP. The navigation performs ok (tested on an iPad 2). But the pages seem to be just rendered images. So loading takes a while and compression artifacts are clearly visible, which is distracting and not business-like. Furthermore it contains a lot of ads. But I like the contents journal. (App Store)

The E&Y Performance Journal: The journal sometimes features articles on logistics and supply chain management as well. Furthermore it is graphically stunning and uses the features of a touch-screen-display. (App Store)

Supply Chain Digital: The issue took the longest to download (probably about 5 minutes on a 25MBit connection). When I wanted to switch apps to get some distraction, the download was interrupted (even though it could have downloaded the issue in the background). Since I dislike badly written apps, I deleted it immediately.

The Supply Chain Quarterly Journal on the iPad

The Article Overview in the EY Performance Journal

Business applications

There are a few supply chain production apps as well, even one for selecting supplier management strategies based on related risks (app store USD 0.99). But other than this one I did not find any real business-applications worth mentioning.

Supplier Management Evaluation

Conclusion

So, it seems that supply chain specific apps are still missing on the app store. Of course you can always use Numbers as a spreadsheet and Pages for doing some writing, but I really was expecting more of this research…

At least at the moment there does not seem to be many business, let alone supply chain, related applications, which would make an iPad a useful device for business purposes.

If you find other useful apps, just let me know an I’ll post them here as well.

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Apple Supply Chain - This Week in Supply Chain Management (7 / 2012)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:41:31 +0000

I hope you had a good week. My simulation model gets its final touches, so that all my scenarios run smoothly and (hopefully) produce some interesting results.
Last week I started with some basic supply chain scenarios like serial, convergent and divergent — and I liked the results. The next step will be to include some more demanding structures. First will be a consumer goods supply chain as highlighted here in the blog.

And this is what others wrote about this week.

Articles

Jan Husdal had a look at the WEF report on “Supply Chain and Transport Risk” and summarizes the key figures and conclusions. (husdal.com)
Tim Cook talked about the Apple supply chain and also the recent litigations regarding the working conditions within their supplier companies. One of the conclusions is to publish monthly updates on the changes within the supply chain. (ZDNet)
The OR Blog reported on possibly upcoming legislation relevant to supply chain resilience and the ISO 28002 “Standard for Resilience in the Supply Chain”. (Operational Risk Management Blog)

Already tweeted

There are also some article I already tweeted during the week. You can follow me on twitter.

Supply Chain News: Is it Time to Make Supplier Risk Management Programs more Real-Time? @scdigest http://t.co/FWM0c4ZI
Supply chain risk moves up the agenda via @logisticsmanagr http://t.co/5wEAkqC9
Supply chain risks, cyber security top risk manager concerns via @BusInsMagazine http://t.co/paL8kd7N

Have a nice weekend!

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iPad for the Researcher

Daniel Dumke — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:18:00 +0000

I just read an nice article evaluating the pros and cons (mostly pros) for using an Apple iPad as a tool for researchers.

See yourself: iPad Review: 60 days and 6 reasons why you need it

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Next Generation iPhone leaked

Daniel Dumke — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:30:00 +0000

Just a short note: Outsourcing always means giving away information which prior only belonged to one company. It therefore carries increased risk of theft, be it physical or intellectual.

In the last days several videos showed up on youtube showing what might be the next generation Apple iPhone.
Usually these videos are published from bloggers or the press, sometimes money for the device/video is paid.

But I would be worried much more about the pictures, that are not published… Presumably competitors like Sony-Ericsson, HTC, etc. might be willing to pay much more to get a hands-on glimpse on this device.

How can companies prevent this kind of risks? Is insourcing the only option?

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Supply Chain Compliance for Risk Mitigation

Daniel Dumke — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:33:00 +0000

Supply Chain Compliance

Apple Inc. recently published their Supplier Responsibility Report (PDF) for 2009.

In this report Apple elaborates what measures they are taking to ensure a broad set of goals at the inbound side of their supply chain. They especially address possible problems at their asian suppliers.The Supplier Code of Conduct contains the following topics:

Labor and Human Rights (eg. fair treatment, working hours, wages)
Health and Savety (eg. emergeny prevention, ergonomics)
Environmental Impact (eg. wastewater management, hazardous substance management)
Ethics (eg. whistleblowing, protection of intellectual property)

Instead of just including the code within supplier contracts, Apple also monitors compliance through audits, and promotes training of the suppliers employees.

Risk Mitigation

Outsourcing is one possibility for a single company to mitigate some supply chain risks by moving the risks to the suppliers. The financial impact of some risks usually will be covered in the contract by the means of penalty payments for non-performance. Apple is making use of this measure for a long time already. The slogan “Designed in California Assembled in China” is printed on each Apple product.

But outsourcing cannot reduce all SC related risks to zero, since many still affect the company. In the following I would like to point out three measures from the Supplier Responsibility Report and their implications for supply chain risk:

Child labor, insufficient waste management,… not only pose an ethical problem, which must not be neglected, but of course also has implications for the public opinion about Apple and its products possibly annihilating the current campaigns for hazardous substance reductions.

Monitoring the suppliers management system can give early warnings for mismanagement at the supplier, possibly affecting the timeliness of deliveries.

Training of the suppliers employees might increase productivity, job satisfaction, therefore reducing quality issues.

Doing a cost benefit analysis on these topics would be myopic, since it neglects the ethical implications of the measures. On the cost side alone measures like training of the suppliers employees or the ban on child labor seem to be quite cheap.

Conclusion

From a research point of view it is important to integrate these efforts into a holistic SCRM approach. This also shows that supply chain (risk) management and ethical / sustainable behavior cannot be viewed separately in a global supply chain. The interactions between risks / opportunities on the one hand and ethical and sustainable behavior on the other are so complex, that both have to be included in the same model to make the best decision possible.

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