Supply Chain Management Under The Threat Of International Terrorism

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, the United States and the Western world entered into a new era – one in which large scale terrorist acts are to be expected. The impacts of the new era will challenge supply chain managers to adjust relations with suppliers and customers, contend with transportation difficulties and amend inventory management strategies. This paper looks at the twin corporate challenges of (i) preparing to deal with the aftermath of terrorist attacks and (ii) operating under heightened security. The first challenge involves setting certain operational redundancies. The second means less reliable lead times and less certain demand scenarios. In addition, the paper looks at how companies should organize to meet those challenges efficiently and suggests a new public-private partnership. While the paper is focused on the US, it has worldwide implications

Like COVID, tackling climate change demands a technological leap

Vaccines are helping us survive this pandemic. The climate emergency requires a similar leap in technology and the international co-operation needed to deliver it, says Yossi Sheffi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Eco-Growth: A Framework for Sustainable Growth

Growth is imperative for corporate success and yet the environmental impact of this growth is not sustainable. In this paper we offer a framework for thinking about the stages of tackling the environmental sustainability challenge. It ranges from eco-efficiency, which includes initiatives that reduce costs while reducing environmental footprint; eco-alignment, including initiatives requiring cooperation with suppliers and customers; eco-innovation, which includes initiatives based on innovative products and processes; and eco-growth which includes initiatives contributing to the company’s growth, combining all the others. The second part of the paper offers a framework for analyzing the trade-off between shareholders objectives and sustainability objectives. The framework is based on the concept of the efficiency frontier and is used to tie to the four proposed stages of tackling environmental sustainable growth

A Supply Chain View of Product Carbon Footprints: Results from the Banana Supply Chain

Interest in the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to measure the carbon footprint of products has increased in recent years. While issues have been raised regarding the use of LCA to measure carbon footprints, the difficulties of doing so in the context of a modern supply chain have received less attention. In this paper we present a case study of the carbon footprint of bananas done in partnership with a leading importer of bananas and a U.S. retail grocery chain. Issues related to data quality and access represent a significant hurdle in measuring the carbon footprint across a supply chain, and we analyze our results in the context of ownership of the supply chain through the use of the GHG Protocol’s concept of emission scopes. Sharing information between supply chain partners has been promoted as one method of resolving data issues, but raises important issues related to supply chain variability. Through an analysis of the impact of transportation we show how the structure of a supply chain introduces significant variability in the carbon footprint required to serve different customers

Effect of scenario planning on field experts' judgment of long-range investment decisions

We present the results of three field experiments demonstrating the effect of scenario planning on field experts' judgment of several long-range investment decisions. Our results show, contrary to past findings, that the use of multiple scenarios does not cause an aggregate increase or decrease in experts' confidence in their judgment. Rather, expert judgment changes in accordance with how an investment fares in a given scenario: it becomes more favorable if the investment is found to be useful for a particular scenario used by the expert, and vice versa. This scenario-induced change is moderated by the expert's confidence in his/her judgment before using the scenario. Finally, our results show that field experts prefer more flexible options to make specific long-range investments after using multiple scenarios.National Research Council (U.S.). Transportation Research Board (National Cooperative Highway Research Program grant, project 20-83(1)

A type-independent approach to supply-chain strategy evaluation

Extant literature lacks established frameworks or methods that can be used to evaluate a supply chain strategy. In this paper we present a type-independent approach to evaluate a business unit's supply chain strategy as a conceptual system. Using as its starting point a conceptualization of the supply chain strategy known as a functional strategy map, the approach calls for an evaluation of the supply chain strategy along several general evaluation criteria: feasibility, support, coverage, compatibility, sufficiency, synergy, and parsimony. For some of these evaluation criteria, we have proposed an evaluation method. Both the proposed criteria and methods were tested and refined through two action research projects. The ability of the approach to identify conflicts in the supply chain strategy provides evidence in support of its evaluative power. As more replications are conducted, our understanding of the capabilities and limitations of both the criteria and the method are bound to improve. At this point, nevertheless, the method and criteria have shown enough promise to warrant further exploration and refinement, and represent a novel contribution to the literature

Expressing a supply-chain strategy as a conceptual system

Extant literature lacks established frameworks or methods that can be used to evaluate a supply chain strategy. In this paper we present a type-independent approach to evaluate a business unit's supply chain strategy as a conceptual system. Using as its starting point a conceptualization of the supply chain strategy known as a functional strategy map, the approach calls for an evaluation of the supply chain strategy along several general evaluation criteria: feasibility, support, coverage, compatibility, sufficiency, synergy, and parsimony. For some of these evaluation criteria, we have proposed an evaluation method. Both the proposed criteria and methods were tested and refined through two action research projects. The ability of the approach to identify conflicts in the supply chain strategy provides evidence in support of its evaluative power. As more replications are conducted, our understanding of the capabilities and limitations of both the criteria and the method are bound to improve. At this point, nevertheless, the method and criteria have shown enough promise to warrant further exploration and refinement, and represent a novel contribution to the literature

Relationship between freight accessibility and logistics employment in US counties

This paper analyzes the relationship between freight accessibility and logistics employment in the US. It develops an accessibility measure relevant for logistics companies based on a gravity model. This allows for an analysis of the accessibility of US counties focusing on four different modes of transportation: road, rail, air, and maritime. Using a Partial Least Squares model, these four different freight accessibility measures are combined into two constructs, continental and intercontinental freight accessibility, and related to logistics employment. Results show that highly accessible counties attract more logistics employment than other counties. The analyses show that it is very important to control for the effect of the county population on both freight accessibility and logistics employment. While county population explains the most variation in the logistics employment per county, there is a significant relationship between freight accessibility and logistics employment, when controlling for this effect