Supply Chain Risk

Create a Resilient Supply Chain in Spite of Climate Change

In the last year,  there have been 17 natural disasters incurring more than $1 billion dollars in damages. According to experts hosted by The Risk Institute this week at an event on building business resilience to climate change, pre-planning and risk improvement can make a huge difference in loss mitigation.

Scott Anderson, a vice president at FM Global outlined numerous strategies that a company could take on in order to mitigate their risk in the event of a catastrophic weather event. These strategies were much more comprehensive than typical human interventions like sandbags; they are what he called physical flood mitigation — installing metal blockades, floodgates/barriers, etc.

This is much more than fear-mongering, these physical mitigations are scientifically proven to be more effective than human intervention. Take the massive flooding due to a hurricane or stalled rainstorm like Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which dumped nearly 60” of rain in just four days in the Houston area. FM Global clients who had made the recommended mitigations to their facilities only suffered a distraction, rather than devastation during the storm. In contrast, those clients who did not, incurred on average $23 million in damages from physical destruction, as well as in lost revenue.

Can your business afford a $23 million loss?

To illustrate an example of supply chain resiliency, Danielle Virant and Lee Ettenhofer from Abbott Nutrition shared their experience of leading the company through a table-top crisis exercise, which was then able to be acted on during Hurricane Harvey in order to ensure that hospitals — and in one case an immunocompromised baby girl — received the life-saving products they needed.

The key takeaway from their experience with the exercise and the actual emergency is that a plan is only as good as it is current, available, and in writing.

“Institutional knowledge is great, but it’s not so great with that knowledge retires without writing it down first,” said Virant.

Their advice is to set a date on the calendar every year to pull out the plan, review it, and make any changes that way it stays current and can quickly be applied if and when the need arises.

Kirk Pasich, an outstanding L.A. based litigator, shared some fascinating insights on the importance of contract language between the insurer and the insured, saying, “They [the insurer] is nearly always going to win— at least before you call me — when there is vague wording in a contract.”

Proving yet again, that specificity of language is much more important than your 10th-grade self ever thought it would be.

Introducing the SCRAM™ Tool

The Risk Institute is excited to announce SCRAM™, a supply chain resilience assessment and management tool, developed by researchers at The Ohio State in collaboration with the U.S. Air force, Dow Chemical, L Brands and a number of other companies.

Businesses Need Resilience
In an age of global turbulence, resilience is a key competency for corporations. How can a company improve the resilience of its supply chain processes, so that it can recover rapidly from unexpected disruptions, assure business continuity and adapt effectively to changing external conditions?

The Solution
SCRAM™ is a facilitated process, supported by a computer-based toolkit, that provides a diagnostic assessment of an organization’s preparedness and fitness for coping with turbulent change. The process identifies resilience gaps and then suggests enhancements that will strengthen the company’s capacity to survive, adapt, and flourish—even when surprises occur.

What Can SCRAM™ Do For You?
SCRAM™ offers businesses a unique, comprehensive approach to understand the pattern of their potential vulnerabilities and to design a portfolio of supply chain capabilities that will offset those vulnerabilities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information about SCRAM™, please contact us at The Risk Institute.

 

Building responsible and resilient supply chains

Supply chains have become global and highly complex. Building and maintaining a resilient supply chain is a key success factor for businesses operating in a fast-changing world.connected-globe-rgb-international

EY Climate Change and Sustainability Services (CCaSS) collaborated with the UN Global Compact on the study in an effort to better understand how companies are managing their supply chains in ways that support the objectives of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The UN Global Compact is the world’s largest sustainability initiative and EY has been a participant since 2009.

The report draws on business inputs across geographies, sectors and business models. CCaSS and Advisory Supply Chain and Operations professionals interviewed 70 clients globally to explore how they are embedding sustainability in their supply chains by managing risks and adopting new commitments around human rights, the environment and the well-being of communities in which they operate.

Overall, the study indicates that by improving environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance throughout the supply chain, companies can enhance processes, reduce costs, increase productivity, innovate, differentiate and improve societal outcomes.

Conclusions explored in the report include:

  • Companies are on a continuum from managing risks through creating shared value with stakeholders to achieving differentiation for their products or services;
  • Leaders are achieving competitive advantage in the supply chain through increased collaboration, technology innovation, greater efficiency and supplier diversity;
  • Mature supply chain models integrate buying and sourcing practices with product design and development to enhance sustainability results tied to their manufacturing and service delivery;
  • Currently, only a small percentage of companies have achieved leadership maturity levels that can lead to shared value with suppliers, enable suppliers to operate as an extension of the business and engage in meaningful, collaborative dialogue.

Based on interviews we identified several actions companies can take to further embed sustainability in their supply chains:

  • Assess materiality, to focus on the most pressing issues, taking UN Global Compact principles into consideration
  • Align resources, structures and processes to focus on supply chain sustainability across the organization
  • Train management and suppliers on market practices
  • Invest in diverse and inclusive supply chain partners
  • Stretch existing sustainability goals beyond direct operations, to include tiers of the supply chain
  • Deploy technology to increase accountability and transparency
  • Leverage buying power and influence to trigger shifts toward supply chain sustainability
  • Disclose supply chain information, beyond stand-alone sustainability reporting mechanisms

This post was written and published by EY, one The Risk Institute’s founding members, in August 2016. To view the original article or download detailed study findings, click here. 

Data Analytics and Managing the Risk of Demand Uncertainty

by Gregory Sabin – Visiting Lecturer, The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business

A 2012 Supply Chain Insights survey asked supply chain managers to name their top 10 pain points. Three out of four respondents listed demand volatility, which made it one of the most painful aspects of supply chain management, second only tosabin Greg supply chain visibility.  Firms can reduce demand volatility and the associated risks by incorporating economic and demographic data to create simple and more accurate business models.

Risks associated with demand volatility include both risks of overestimating and underestimating demand.  Overestimation of demand will cause declines in the firm’s return on assets (ROA) because of the overcommitment of assets and unnecessary expenditures that will be incurred in anticipation of surplus demand that does not materialize.  Underestimating demand is associated with increased production costs, lower quality levels and decreased customer satisfaction.

These risks affect every part of the business, including customer service, financial planning and analysis, supplier development, new product development, human resource management, product/process engineering and investor relations.  As such, firms need to approach forecasting and planning from a cross-functional perspective.

Why are most businesses not already doing this? As recently as five or six years ago, businesses lacked not only easy access to the detailed information needed to add analytical models to their forecasting process, but also the ability to process that information in a cost-effective manner. Traditionally, this meant firms focused primarily on internal marketing and supply chain information such as distributor estimates, sales projections, product lead times, inventory levels, production capacity and workforce head counts.

Now we are seeing the amount of readily available information exploding in the public domain.  As “big data” and tools to access the information has grown to a point of critical mass, firms cannot only access customer, product and competitor information, but also macroeconomic data that is more detailed and forward-looking than what has been available in the past. Combining this economic data with proprietary firm specific information is creating a new proactive approach to balancing the risk associated with forecasting and demand management.

Early adopters of this new approach are utilizing data-driven analytical tools to enhance the planning and forecasting processes and to give significantly more accurate information to all business units involved in their company’s planning process. The pain associated with demand volatility can be reduced because a firm has armed itself not only with better information, but also with an integrated cross-functional perspective.

The Risk Institute Executive Education Series will continue on April 30, 2015 when Professor Sabin will co-lead a half-day session on Demand Uncertainty, Data Analytics and Risk Management. For more information or to sign up for the session, visit FISHER.OSU.EDU/RISK

 

Preparing for Supply Chain Disruption and “100-year events”

john-gray 100x150By Professor John Gray

Tsunamis. Nuclear disasters. Factory fires. These are the kinds of cataclysmic incidents companies often label “100-year events,” putting even the best risk management infrastructures to the test and leaving an indelible stamp on the businesses that survive.

For companies with global reach, however, these so-called 100-year events can occur with striking regularity. For a firm operating in 30 independent regions, the likelihood that they experience at least one “100-year event” in one of those regions in a given year is over 25 percent. Considering each year independent of the other, this company in a half-decade will have a nearly 80 percent likelihood of experiencing at least one 100-year event, making the unpredictable seem, on the contrary, quite predictable.

The incidents themselves don’t indicate a company has taken undue risks or “failed.” In the end, what separates firms with strong risk programs and those with weaker ones is the degree to which they’re aware of risks they face (and have reduced these risks where appropriate), how they detect those risks, and how they respond when an event occurs.

Greif Protest 2014

One Columbus, Ohio-area company, Delaware-based industrial packager Greif experienced its own collision with supply chain risk when one of its plants in Turkey was taken over in the spring. News reports described the takeover as “led by a small radical group of individuals,” reportedly communist workers. The takeover and subsequent plant closing will cost the company $27 million this year, no small change for a firm whose 2013 net income was under $150 million.

From an outsider’s perspective, such an incident can raise many questions: When the company chose Turkey, were these risks considered in comparison with other locations? If they were, how was the risk incorporated into the decision? If not, would they have changed course if this possibility hit the radar? Once the plant was operational, what disruption mitigation plans were implemented? And finally, were there any opportunities for prevention?

It is important to note that Greif already has a well-structured and comprehensive risk management system in place, driven by risk management teams for each strategic business unit. They’re the source of regular monitoring of economic, political and regulatory changes that might impact operations along with education, auditing and compliance management for the company’s global footprint. Even with such a system in place, this incident still occurred, illustrating a brutal truth about supply chain risk management: You can do everything right and will still experience adverse events.

Doing everything right starts with a program that includes four key elements: Assessment, planning, detection, and response.

  • Assessment is crucial as the supply chain is being designed, but it is impossible to assign expected costs to all potential supply chain risks. Companies often use a “red-yellow-green” or slightly more sophisticated coding system to supplement the analysis of quantifiable costs. Assessment also includes evaluations of “time to recover” ( TTR) and “revenue at risk” (RAR) (which goes by other names, including revenue impact and risk exposure) for a given site, which are critical for planning.
  • A key aspect of Planning is Business Continuity Plans (BCPs), which outline steps to be taken in the event of foreseeable disruptions. This is also where firms invest in risk mitigation (for example, owning extra inventory or developing a second source for a component). TTR and RAR provide the justification for such investments.
  • Detection is learning about risks as soon as possible, ideally while they are still developing.
  • Finally, Response is the “real-time” work after an incident has occurred.  Firms with sophisticated supply chain risk systems have “playbooks” to improve responsiveness to many possible incidents.

In the aftermath, companies faced with challenges similar to Greif’s typically revisit their location-related risk management programs and often face another classic problem of risk management: Return on investment. Because quantifying all risks, even probabilistically, is impossible, quantifying ROI is not feasible. Because of this, firms may overinvest in risk management plans after an incident hits close to home, and then scale back programs, ironically, when they have been effective at reducing risk. The general belief in the context of investment in supply chain risk managements currently seems to be “more is better.” As most firms historically have neglected this area, that’s probably a good thing. At some point, though, especially after periods of quiet, CFOs may start asking what return they are getting on risk mitigation plans with such as multiple/backup sources, extra inventory, and a staff working on plans they hope will never be used. Supply chain risk managers will likely need to rely on more and better data on the likelihood and costs of supply chain risks, not just for internal planning but for justification of risk-reducing investments. With the “big data” trend, consultants, entrepreneurs, and even insurance companies are stepping up to try to fill this need. It is far from clear whether supply chain risk will ever be quantifiable enough to develop accurate ROIs for risk-reductions , but it is likely firms will continue to get incrementally better. That’s all anyone, even the CFOs, can ask for.

Professor John Gray is an associate professor of operations at the Fisher College of Business and an affiliated faculty member of The Risk Institute. Prior to receiving his PhD from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, he worked for eight years in operations management at Procter & Gamble while receiving an MBA from Wake Forest University. Prof. Gray’s research has received several awards and recognitions, including the 2012 Emerald Citations of Excellence award, the OM Division’s Chan Hahn best paper award at the Academy of Management conference in 2012, and the 2011 Pace Setters award for research at Fisher. He also serves as a senior editor for Production and Operations Management and an associate editor for the Journal of Operations Management. Among his service to professional societies, he is serving a 5-year leadership role for the Academy of Management’s OM Division from 2014-2018.

Interested in supply chain logistics and risk management? Join us for our executive education session on  September 10, 2014  to learn more.  Contact The Risk Institute for details.