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Retrospective 2011 and Happy Holidays

Daniel Dumke — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:44:00 +0000

The number of daily visitor slowly declines, even the comment spam goes down. It seems that (at least for some parts of the world) the “quiet” time of the year has begun.
And for me this is a great moment to look back. The same time last year I just celebrated my first blog anniversary!

This year we not only had the second birthday in early December, but also entry number 200.

Last years goals

So let’s review the good, the bad and the ugly of 2011.
With the last anniversary I set some goals especially regarding the content and orientation on the blog.
I did travel a lot this year, at least more than usual (Africa, Thailand, Baltic Sea, Mauritius) and in addition I had some “side projects” (wedding) to take care of. Luckily, I still was able to keep up with my schedule: Two new articles per week and, starting in March, also a weekly This Week in Supply Chain Management post, dealing with selected, interesting news of the week (of course this last segment was inspired by a great science podcast with a similar name: TWIS).
Overall I was able to publish 140 articles in 2011.

Numbers

Don’t take me the wrong way. The main question for me is not the number of articles, but the perceived quality. So let’s have a look at the readership:
While the blog had about 1200 readers in December 2010, this number quadrupled to about 5200 visitors with over 8500 page views over the last month; some of them regular readers, some just passing by. The locational distribution is similar to last years: most visitors come from the US, second is India, third UK, forth Germany (figure 1).

Figure 1: Readership in 2011 (Google Analytics)

Of course this huge increase in visitors has been a great motivation for me. And so, my gratitude goes to you, my reader: Thank you for reading my blog and staying interested.

The Top 5

But of course, the view back into 2011 wouldn’t be perfect without a Top 5 list. So as last year, I will provide you with the Top 5 articles of this year.

Number one with a large gap to the next places is the Supply Chain Management Literature Review. A quite short article, which summarizes current literature in supply chain management.
The second article is a contribution to my supply chain risk management thesis series on the Impact of Demographics on Supply Chain Risk Management Practices.
The third article was from early January, 2011 about how to define risk in general in the Definition of Risk.
Measuring the Bullwhip Effect in Supply Chains, deals with a case study on how to measure the bullwhip effect, since you cannot manage what you can’t measure.
The fifth most popular article talks about Agile Supply Chains, defining the concept of agility and how it relates to supply chain management.

The Worst 5

But of course, in the light of the articles mentioned above, there are also articles hidden in the shadows. So this is the list of the 5 worst performing articles in 2011.
And especially this year, I think, that some very informative articles might be hidden there (to be honest, the comparison is not completely fair, since some of the articles have only been published a few weeks ago).

Looking around the corners of my own field, I try to summarize an article about Resilience from a Psychological Perspective. This article also highlights the influence of individual resilience towards the organizational level.
Another article I like quite a lot, published only in November, talks about the different Types of Supply Chains and their attributes.
This article highlights the impact of the Supply Chain Topology on its Performance.
The Approach to evaluate the Firms Supply Chain Strategy as a Conceptual System comes in 2nd to last, it explains a concept to analyze, understand and create supply chain strategies.
Lastly, the least often clicked article is a Case Study on managing Disruptions in Supply Chains

Goals 2012

I am really looking forward to 2012. For the blog 2012 is the Year of Renewal and therefore I have planned some changes to the site.
First of all, there will be a layout change to better address the issue of accessing the large amount of relevant literature, now hidden somewhere in the archive.
Secondly, since I am now in the final stages of my dissertation, I will focus a little bit more on that. For the blog that means that I will have to reduce the amount of new articles a little bit at least until I finish my dissertation.

I wish you happy holidays and a great start in 2012! I will be back on January, 2nd.

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Supply Chain Risk Management Blog - iPad Style

Daniel Dumke — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:20:00 +0000

There are many ways to read the articles in my blog. I recently explained some of them here, but I just stumbled upon another way using the Flipboard App for the iPad (free).

Results

After installation and configuration the blog looks like shown on the pictures below and you can flip (hence the name) through the articles, in the style of a news paper.

At the beginning you’ll see an overview of the most recent articles on the blog.

Figure 1: Article Overview

By swiping from right to left you can navigate through the archive of the blog.

Figure 2: Browse the Archive

Found something interesting? Just tap the article of your choice for a full view.

Figure 3: Full Article View

Installation

The installation is basically self explanatory, after downloading and starting the App. All you have to do is tap on More in the upper right corner and type “SCRMBlog” in the search bar. You should then select the RSS Feed for my blog. Don’t forget to mark the blog as a favorite, so you do not have to use the search function every time.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Flipboard is a great way to explore large collections of text on the web that are updated regularly.

If you liked this post also have a look at How to use the iPad for research.

Even if it seems that way, I am not sponsored by either Apple nor the guys behind Flipboard, I just like the way the blog looks.

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This Week in Supply Chain Management (19 / 2011)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:04:00 +0000

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:

Enjoy your weekend!

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This Week in Supply Chain Management (18 / 2011)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 06 May 2011 12:25:00 +0000

This was week 18 in 2011. I hope you had a great week and enjoyed reading the blog. I have read several great stories this week, that I’ll present here.

News

The opinions on the duration of the Japanese disruption diverge, scenarios include autumn (Japan Today) or for some companies longer (Electronics Weekly)
For the US: The FDA gained more rights to prevent unsafe goods from entering the food supply chain (Medical News Today)

Blogs

On Jan Husdal’s blog this week was all about resilience (Jan Husdal: 1, 2)
Forbes Blogs has an article on how to avoid the worst effects of disasters on supply chains (CIO Central)

Research / Studies

Yossi Sheffi from the MIT elaborates on the SCALE program to “cultivate supply chain experts” (MIT News)
Anna Nagurney writes about her research concerning the effects of supply chain risk on mergers and acquisitions (Dr. Anna Nagurney)

If you haven’t read the articles in my blog have a look at the Current Evolution of Supply Chain Management and how fuzzy logic can be used in supply chain management (research).

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This Week in Supply Chain Management (17 / 2011)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:21:00 +0000

So what have I been reading this week? There have been several great articles all around the web this week, some from a conceptual view, how to prevent risk and several news stories about recently manifested operational risks.

News

Two large companies have been hit by major “virtual” disruptions. On the other hand the Japanese earthquake still disrupts production at some car makers.

Sony Servers have been attacked and over 70 million customer files (including credit card information) has been stolen (Wall Street Journal)
Amazon cloud offerings (EC2) has been hit by an outage with several customers including Foursquare affected (Yahoo)
Toyota will not be able to run full production until the end of the year due to the quake (NY Times)
Also, Canon is struggling with the effects (Reuters)
Overall ratings for all Japanese car makers have been lowered by S&P (BBC)

Blogs

“Supply chain redesigns: not just about the oil”, discusses the impact of high oil prices on supply chain redesign efforts (Supply Chain Quarterly)
Acts of God or Acts of Man? Jan Husdal elaborates on the role decision makers play in shaping the effects of desasters (Jan Husdal)
“Operational Risk Management: Discipline and Professional Development…”, on a related subject: how is operational risk management integrated into todays businesses (Operational Risk Management Blog)

Research / Studies

Christopher Craighead analyzes the Japan disaster and its aftermath from a researchers perspective (Penn State University)

The current environment is a good example why risk management is an important part of every aspect of supply chain management, be it virtual or real.
I am curious to see the first analyses, if the impact on the japanese car makers is despite SCRM efforts or due to a lack of them. In the last week I wrote about how agile supply chains can be used for risk mitigation and I summarized a great article on the impact of risks on SC performance.

You can complement this listing with your favorite articles in the comment section below.

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This Week in Supply Chain Management (16 / 2011)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:57:00 +0000

This article concludes this week in supply chain management by collecting the top stories published in the last seven days.
About 100 to 150 web articles or news stories relevant for supply chain risk management are published each week. However I am amazed how many articles seem to contain valid information, but after more thorough examination proof to be filled with advertisement be it for services or conferences. After removing those, the following articles have been left.

News

Japan’s supply chain ripple effects with comments from Y. Sheffi from the MIT (MIT News)

Blogs

Can uninsurable risks be insured? Lockton Launches Risk Management Tool to Address Uninsurable Risks (insurancejournal.com)

Research / Studies

Supply Chain Security Management (Jan Husdal)

In the last week I wrote about a practitioners view on supply chain risk management and how supply chain simulation can help to reduce the bullwhip effect.

You can complement this listing with your favorite articles in the comment section below.

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This Week in Supply Chain Management (15 / 2011)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 05:22:00 +0000

This article concludes this week in supply chain management by collecting the top stories published in the last seven days.

This week the consequences of the Japan earth quake still rule the news coverage and the blogosphere.

News

Responding To The Post-Quake Component Supply Chain Crisis (Forbes Blog)
Toyota Europe shutdowns add to Japan supply fears (Reuters)
The big threat: Chip shortage (CNET)
New project launched to improve food chain supply between Australia and the UAE (AMEInfo)

Blogs

Another Disaster, Another Supply-Chain Disruption. Will We Ever Learn? (Supplychainbrain.com)

Research / Studies

The proceedings of the 2009 IPSERA Conference are available for download here.
Risk a low priority in strategic sourcing (supplymanagement.com)

I used the last week to write about a literature review in supply chain management and how to measure agile capabilities. I also added the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Summit 2011 to the conference list.

Please feel free to share your most interesting article(s) of the week in the comments below!

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Holidays in Africa

Daniel Dumke — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 12:08:00 +0000

Elefant Close-up at the Addo National Park (click to enlarge)

The most south-western point of Africa at the Cape of Good Hope (click to enlarge)

Due to my vacation in South Africa for the last two weeks the articles have been a little bit more irregular than usual. But since I am back working again now, I try to stick to my former schedule of a new article every Monday and Wednesday.

The pictures show some impressions from the other side of the world.

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First Anniversary

Daniel Dumke — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 10:06:00 +0000

Today is the first anniversary of this blog so I wanted to take the time for some review of the insights I gained during this time.

History / Statistics

Exactly one year ago I started this blog, with the goal to publish interesting results from research and to foster an open exchange between research and business. Furthermore I wanted to generate an continuous output to monitor my own progress during my research and keep a public log of selected articles.

Within the last seven month my research made some headway as well, I nearly finished my in-depth interviews with supply chain professionals from all over the world, to get an overview of the state of the art in business. Furthermore I started building my supply chain model using an agent based simulation framework.

Visitors from all over the World (Google Analytics)

Up to now the blog has far exceeded my expectations. 76 articles have been published, for about 1.5 articles per week and at the moment about 1200 readers from all over the world visit the blog each month, with heavy users in the US, UK, India and Germany (see figure). Most of the contacts I met for my research have been acquired through this blog and I received some inquiries for co-publications as well.

Goals

I am going to continue my research, the focus will be on the analysis and evaluation of the conducted interviews, especially comparing them with the previous works in literature and the results from my own model.
For the blog I plan on increasing the article count even further, focussing on the same topics: supply chain strategy, design, and its risks.
In the last few weeks I already made some improvements to the site itself, like the “Categories” plugin on the right sidebar or listing the “Top 5 Entries”, to make navigation easier. And I am also working on showing articles by the same authors that I reviewed.

I am always keen on knowing more about what you think. So contact me if you have suggestions for subjects I should cover, articles to review, or improvements to the site and content.
Let me know what you think!

Stay in touch

For your convenience there are several methods to subscribe to this blog for free.

You can follow me on Twitter, where I will post links to new articles and sometimes other supply chain related posts
You can also use your favorite RSS reader to subscribe to the full length posts and
You can have new articles delivered directly to your email inbox

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