Humanitarian and military supply chain co-operation

Disaster response supply chains are supply chains that must work under extreme conditions. In response to an emergency or humanitarian crisis, fully flexible supply chains are needed. In disaster response, military supply chains can play a major role side-by-side with humanitarian supply chains. Best results can be achieved where the extreme agility of rescue organizations can be matched with the extreme efficiency of the military.

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No Beer Today

The major impact, if transportation stops in the UK is that the pubs will go out of beer. Big deal. Apparently, that is one of the “critical” sectors in the UK society and economy that will be hit a by transportation disruption, according to Alan McKinnon in his 2006 article, Life Without Trucks: The Impact of a Temporary Disruption of Road Freight Transport on a National Economy.  McKinnon argues that the logistics of manufacturing and distribution are now so finely tuned that any disruption can bring  an industry or even a whole region, let alone a whole country, to a halt in only a few days.

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Fasten your seatbelts: Supply chain turbulence

This is the first time I have encountered the term turbulent environments in my research on supply chain risk. Peter Trkman and Kevin Mc Cormack use the terms turbulent and turbulence quite frequently in their 2009 article,  Supply chain risk in turbulent environments – A conceptual model for managing supply chain network risk. But is it really something new? After reading the article I’m left with the impression that they have just taken the words uncertain and uncertainty and replaced them with  turbulent and turbulence.

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