Archive for Supply Chain Risk Management
Hurricane Earl, Cancer, and Satistics
· CommentsAs I write this, Hurricane Earl is chugging up the East Coast. I live in Boston; we don’t yet know if the hurricane will hit our area or whether we will just get much needed rain. The waiting has got me thinking about the weather related risks of global warming.
Scientific consensus is that global warming is real, and that in addition to warmer mean temperatures, we will also… Continue reading
Ryder published its Carbon Disclosure Project 2010 Report a few weeks ago (you can download a copy here). The small font and format of the report makes it a bit difficult to read, but if you plow through it, you’ll uncover some interesting bits of information. Here are two of my key takeaways from the report:
Climate change presents both risks and opportunities. It’s important to have processes… Continue reading
Gob was a self-educated turkey. He studied statistics for fun. His quarters were a bit tight at the farm, but the upside was that for 140 days straight he had been fed a nice grain meal. And as he got older, the meals got bigger. Based on this history and his statistical models, Gob had very high expectations of receiving another nice meal tomorrow from Farmer Joe, who obviously had… Continue reading
First, nearly everyone in the business believes that we are living in, yes, a pre-9/11 era when it comes to the security and resilience of electronic information systems. Something very big—bigger than the Google-China case—is likely to go wrong, they said, and once it does, everyone will ask how we could have been so complacent for so long.
This was one of the key points raised in a very interesting… Continue reading
When companies construct supply chains around new products, they often decide to engage with partners in China or other low-wage nations for manufacturing. However, this choice comes with the risk of counterfeiting.
ARC recently published a strategic report titled “Global Strategies for Anti-Counterfeiting and Brand Protection” by Janice Abel and John Blanchard (available to ARC clients only). One of the examples cited in the report was the case… Continue reading
A Monsanto Plant Tackles Manufacturing Risks
· CommentsProcess manufacturing plants have distributed control systems (DCSs) that are connected to plant floor sensors that monitor pressure, heat, temperature, etc. These sensors are used to regulate processes. For example, flow measurements can be transmitted to the DCS; when the measurement reaches a certain point, the controller instructs a valve to open or close. These sensors can also generate alerts if measurements fall outside desired parameters. These alerts are a… Continue reading
Supply chain risk management solutions must encompass process, content, and connectivity. Even before the economic downturn, large enterprise software vendors like SAP and Oracle had begun to introduce Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solutions in response to a growing customer requirement: the ability to respond to risks more efficiently.
Initially, these solutions were largely process based—i.e., they created process flows for dealing with specific compliance requirements. Companies… Continue reading
The Gulf Oil Spill
· CommentsHere at ARC Advisory Group, we are well known for our research and expertise on supply chain and automation technologies used by the process industries. I’ve been waiting for one of our process industry gurus to write something about the Gulf oil spill and Larry O’Brien finally did last week in “How the Gulf Oil Spill Affects Process Automation, Safety, and Asset Management” (available to ARC clients only). … Continue reading
