No sooner did I finish reading this morning’s Wall Street Journal article, “Swine Flu Remains Mild as Vaccine Advances” when I saw former colleague’s Bob Ferrari‘s tweet and blog post about his upcoming session on supply chain risk management at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals 2009 Annual Conference in Chicago.
While the Journal’s article title strikes an optimistic chord, close readers will have noted that the article also reports that China has sufficient flu vaccine for only some 5% of its population. In the course of working closely with clients for the past 12+ years on supply chain and IT issues (more than a few times with Bob Ferrari’s wonderful collaboration) I have had several conversations with clients about supply chain risk management. Often it was induced by a natural disaster in some part of the world that motivated companies to dust off their risk management strategies (or to kick off a risk management strategy).
In the current environment, as people come back from summer vacations, it may well be that the current economic environment and the H1N1 virus push supply chain risk management to the top of the agenda.
There are reasons to be optimistic about the flu virus. Any company who does any significant amount of manufacturing in China will nevertheless want to watch the situation closely, and, in the spirit of ‘hope is not a strategy’, either revisit their supply chain risk management strategy, or kick-start a risk strategy where one does not already exist.
Bob Ferrari’s timely session on supply chain risk management is on September 21st. If I get to Chicago, I strain to think of a more important topic.
Recommmended Reads:
- Bob Ferrari’s blog, Supply Chain Matters
- AMR research: Supply Chain Risk Management Needs Are Shaping a Budding Technology Market
- AMR Research: Supply Chain Risk, 2008–2009: As Bad as It Gets
- CFO Magazine: Supply Chains and Demand
- Supply Chain Digest: Talking Supply Chain Risk in a Language Everyone Understands – Money!! By Mitul Shah, Senior Consultant with Retail, CPG & Logistics Practice at Infosys Consulting.
Other Resources:
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