Jan Husdal

Supply Chain Disruptions - Does location matter?

In locations with a sparse transportation network there are not much options as to setting up the supply chain; the supply chain is in fact constrained by a certain physical location. Does this make it more susceptible to disruptions?

Supply Chain Disruptions is a pdf-version of a presentation I gave at the International Conference on Flexible Supply Chains in a Global Economy, from16 - 18 July 2008, in my hometown of Molde, Norway.

The Severity of Supply Chain Disruptions: Design Characteristics and Mitigation Capabilities

There hasn't been a literature review on this blog for a while, so it's time to pick up where I left. Jumping from 1997 in my previous review to 2007 in today's review, I can tell that supply chain research has made a big leap forward.

The Severity of Supply Chain Disruptions: Design Characteristics and Mitigation. Capabilities by Christopher W. Craighead, Jennifer Blackhurst, M. Johnny Rungtusanatham and Robert B. Handfield presents six propositions that relate the severity of supply chain disruptions to supply chain design charateristics and supply chain mitigation capabilities, illustrating the connections between supply chain risk, vulnerabili ty, resilience, and business continuity planning.

Book Review: Research Methodologies in Supply Chain Management

Is there something like the right research design for supply chain studies? I believe there is, and in Research Methodologies in Supply Chain Management it is more than likely that you will find a research approach that will suit your needs. The books is divided into 5 parts, corresponding to 5 types of studies, each with a set of selected articles pertaining to 1. Literature Review, 2. Surveys , 3. Case Studies, 4. Action Research, and 5. Modelling. I like this structuring and each article or sub-chapter is self-contained to some degree and provides valuable insight for both seasoned and budding researchers still fumbling in the dark. I use it as a handbook whenever I start a new project, just to remind myself of the strengths and pitfalls and the to do and not to do of each approach. The book is available as a paperback edition and as a Kindle edition.

Cutting back on road spending may not be a wise thing to do

In an article today, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet revealed that Statens Vegvesen (or the Norwegian Public Road Administration in English), which oversees the planning, construction and operation of the national and county road networks, is going to make major cuts to their budget, thus halting or severely delaying major infrastructure projects.

Although this may not have much impact and/or increase supply chain disruptions, it should be clear that improving roads standards is not just a traffic safety issue (which the article makes a big point of), but is also a major contributor towards reducing transportation costs and improving overall supply chain quality.

Transportation networks and roads in particular, are the main backbone of modern society, especially in Norway, which lacks the vast rail network that is seen in many European countries. Here, road transport IS the major component in moving goods and people from A to B. Both the sender, the recipient, the freight hauler, or society at large, experience additional costs when goods or people cannot reach their destinations in time or in space, a fact often overlooked by the authorities in charge of building the infrastructure.

It should hence be paramount to increase, rather than cut back on road spending, and as already mentioned, this is not just a traffic safety issue, it is a simply a question of reliability, as one of my previous articles points out.

Simply cutting back on road spending in today's transport-dependent society is not a good idea, and there are many reasons for that. I have mine.

 

Supply Chain Visibility through Web Conferencing

It's weekend and time for some personal reflections. Maybe slightly off-topic for this blog, but the other day I came across "Web Conferencing", a feature-rich full web collaboration service, and it occurred to me how useful this tool is in Supply Chain Management:

One of the core strategies in Supply Chain Risk Management is to increase Supply Chain Visibility, because optimizing individual links in a supply chain is of limited value if these individual links have little or no visibility of what is happening upstream and downstream. This will also assist in achieving Supply Chain Confidence, since all partners, stakeholders and operators within the Supply Chain are aware of each others whereabouts and doabouts, so to speak.