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

Distributional Patterns of Pseudacteon Associated with the Solenopsis saevissima Complex in South America

Classical biological control efforts against imported fire ants have largely involved the use of Pseudacteon parasitoids. To facilitate further exploration for species and population biotypes a database of collection records for Pseudacteon species was organized, including those from the literature and other sources. These data were then used to map the geographical ranges of species associated with the imported fire ants in their native range in South America. In addition, we found geographical range metrics for all species in the genus and related these metrics to latitude and host use. Approximately equal numbers of Pseudacteon species were found in temperate and tropical regions, though the majority of taxa found only in temperate areas were found in the Northern Hemisphere. No significant differences in sizes of geographical ranges were found between Pseudacteon associated with the different host complexes of fire ants despite the much larger and systemic collection effort associated with the S. saevissima host group. The geographical range of the flies was loosely associated with both the number of hosts and the geographical range of their hosts. Pseudacteon with the most extensive ranges had either multiple hosts or hosts with broad distributions. Mean species richnesses of Pseudacteon in locality species assemblages associated with S. saevissima complex ants was 2.8 species, but intensively sampled locations were usually much higher. Possible factors are discussed related to variation in the size of geographical range, and areas in southern South America are outlined that are likely to have been under-explored for Pseudacteon associated with imported fire ants

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)

The ERA Theorem for Safe Memory Reclamation

Safe memory reclamation (SMR) schemes for concurrent data structures offer trade-offs between three desirable properties: ease of integration, robustness, and applicability. In this paper we rigorously define SMR and these three properties, and we present the ERA theorem, asserting that any SMR scheme can only provide at most two of the three properties

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

EEMARQ: Efficient Lock-Free Range Queries with Memory Reclamation

Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) is a common mechanism for achieving linearizable range queries in database systems and concurrent data-structures. The core idea is to keep previous versions of nodes to serve range queries, while still providing atomic reads and updates. Existing concurrent data-structure implementations, that support linearizable range queries, are either slow, use locks, or rely on blocking reclamation schemes. We present EEMARQ, the first scheme that uses MVCC with lock-free memory reclamation to obtain a fully lock-free data-structure supporting linearizable inserts, deletes, contains, and range queries. Evaluation shows that EEMARQ outperforms existing solutions across most workloads, with lower space overhead and while providing full lock freedom

VBR: Version Based Reclamation

Safe lock-free memory reclamation is a difficult problem. Existing solutions follow three basic methods (or their combinations): epoch based reclamation, hazard pointers, and optimistic reclamation. Epoch-based methods are fast, but do not guarantee lock-freedom. Hazard pointer solutions are lock-free but typically do not provide high performance. Optimistic methods are lock-free and fast, but previous optimistic methods did not go all the way. While reads were executed optimistically, writes were protected by hazard pointers. In this work we present a new reclamation scheme called version based reclamation (VBR), which provides a full optimistic solution to lock-free memory reclamation, obtaining lock-freedom and high efficiency. Speculative execution is known as a fundamental tool for improving performance in various areas of computer science, and indeed evaluation with a lock-free linked-list, hash-table and skip-list shows that VBR outperforms state-of-the-art existing solutions

An integrated approach to supply chain risk analysis

Despite the increasing attention that supply chain risk management is receiving by both researchers and practitioners, companies still lack a risk culture. Moreover, risk management approaches are either too general or require pieces of information not regularly recorded by organisations. This work develops a risk identification and analysis methodology that integrates widely adopted supply chain and risk management tools. In particular, process analysis is performed by means of the standard framework provided by the Supply Chain Operations Reference Model, the risk identification and analysis tasks are accomplished by applying the Risk Breakdown Structure and the Risk Breakdown Matrix, and the effects of risk occurrence on activities are assessed by indicators that are already measured by companies in order to monitor their performances. In such a way, the framework contributes to increase companies' awareness and communication about risk, which are essential components of the management of modern supply chains. A base case has been developed by applying the proposed approach to a hypothetical manufacturing supply chain. An in-depth validation will be carried out to improve the methodology and further demonstrate its benefits and limitations. Future research will extend the framework to include the understanding of the multiple effects of risky events on different processe

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