Risk Management

Peeling the Layers of Perceived Protection.

Exel, the North American leader in contract logistics, has partnered with its sister company DHL Supply Chain, the world's leading logistics company, to launch a new risk management solution. DHL Resilience360 is a unique tool that enables customers to assess critical hot spots in their supply chains, visualize them and build a risk profile for initiating potential mitigation activities.

To be resilient, global enterprises need new decision tools for supply chain risk assessment, monitoring and modeling. Cognizant of this, Exel has developed Resilience360, a web-based risk analytics software solution that maps a company’s supply chain risks, and identifies alternative options that either mitigate or eliminate risk entirely.

The Global Risks 2014 report highlights how global risks are not only interconnected, but also have systemic impacts. To manage global risks effectively and build resilience to their impacts, better efforts are needed to understand, measure and foresee the evolution of interdependencies between risks, supplementing traditional risk-management tools with new concepts designed for uncertain environments.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2014 report finds income disparity the most likely risk to cause an impact on a global scale in the next decade. Other risks of significant concern include extreme weather events, unemployment and fiscal crises. The report analyses 31 global risks and includes special in-depth investigations into youth unemployment, digital disintegration and geopolitical risks.

Chinese authorities in Hong Kong this week discovered a narrow concrete tunnel built by smugglers intending to shuttle consumer goods from Hong Kong across the border to the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen.

As critical as supply chain risk management has become, the market for solutions in this area is still emerging and evolving. Solutions are incredibly diverse and wide-ranging. Here we establish a framework for the market and examine the segments, functionality, and players.

The challenges that retailers face during Christmas naturally vary according on the sector and from company to company. For many specialty retailers, having to cope with long lead times, Christmas challenges centre around estimating the season’s demand both well in advance and accurately; not an easy task.

A new MIT study on supply-chain risk shows no correlation between the total amount a manufacturer spends with a supplier and the profit loss it would incur if that supply were suddenly interrupted. This counterintuitive finding defies a basic business tenet that equates the greatest supply-chain risk with suppliers of highest annual expenditure.

Supply chain managers have no peer in understanding the complexity of the global economic and regulatory environment. And, they are well positioned to expedite a cutting edge approach to public-private security cooperation.

Almost seven out of 10 business leaders believe supplier risk analysis will become more complex as they expand into new global markets. That’s according to research by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s report Strategies for managing customer and supplier risks, sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.

Some work toward a comprehensive Enterprise Risk Management system while others respond piecemeal by putting specialists in place to manage specific threats. Where does your company fall along this spectrum?

This paper offers guidance for executives and managers who have a stake in the success of O/O initiatives, and provides a risk intelligent approach to address the risk and maximize the value of an O/O strategy.

If the last few years have shown us anything it is that the supply chain is being exposed to more and more risk. Some of this risk can be managed through better supply chain design; assessing where supply “choke points” are and building in supply and logistical redundancy. Other risk, however, must be managed through better response capabilities.

The ripple effect of small changes in customer demand are magnified upstream through a supply chain all the way from the customer to the retailer to distributor to manufacturer. It is so named because of the resemblance to a bullwhip as the variability of demand increases sharply when you progress up the supply chain.

This report commissioned by the Department for Transport and undertaken by Cranfield School of Management’s Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management (CLSCM) aims to clarify the complex issues inherent in the identification and management of supply chain vulnerability.

This report—prepared by Guardian Six Consulting LLC for the Alliance for American Manufacturing—recommends 10 actions to make America less dependent on foreign nations for the vital products that enable America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines to be the most powerful and effective fighting force in the world.

Organizations should consider how the costs of managing risk balance out with potential lost revenue and damage to reputation that can result from a disruption to operations caused by a natural disaster or political instability in key supplier regions. To be a global business, supply chain risk management is a necessity. The key is to determine how to do it efficiently and effectively.

This article looks at how advancements in information systems affect situation awareness in disaster management. The article considers the collection of intelligence, the collation of those observations into a common operating picture and distribution of awareness updates in a form that can drive effective action.

Supplier risk management has now become imperative. Executives are becoming increasingly aware of the risk these supply chain disruptions pose to their bottom lines, brand reputation, and stock value. IHS can help you prepare for and respond quickly to supply chain disruption – from everyday risks of doing business, to navigating dangerous supply chain floodwaters.