SCRC Meeting April 27-28 on Supply Chain Risk: Building a Risk Management Capability

We are in the last stages of planning for our upcoming 31st Semi-Annual Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (SCRC) Meeting  on Monday and Tuesday, April 27-28, 2015 at North Carolina State University.

The theme of the general meeting will focus on a topic of great interest to supply chain professionals at every level of the organization: “Creating a Supply Chain Risk Management Capability.”

Planning and forecasting in an increasingly complex and volatile global environment presents many management challenges, as supply chains are exposed to an many sources of disruptions and resulting financial impacts.  A number of potential threats exist that can cause severe disruptions and problems at different stages in the supply chain network, including supplier performance issues, logistics-related delays, regulatory intervention in operations, geo-political unrest,  human resource and environmental violations, major storms and weather-related issues, port operations, financial and economic issues, and multiple other sources of unexpected events.  To address these concerns, organizations are devoting more attention and resources to create a supply chain risk management capability.  This event will explore many of the emerging approaches being used to address supply chain risks on the horizon:

• Creation of supply chain risk monitoring and forecasting capabilities.  These capabilities require not only a commitment from senior leadership to fund and staff such an effort, but also a commitment to ensure regular reviews and a governance structure to support rapid decision-making when information on risks is elevated to senior leaders’ attention.
• Enabling decision-support techniques and structured analytical approaches to assessing many sources of supply chain intelligence, that support management insight into risks 6 months to 2 years into the future on a rolling horizon.
• Monitoring of regulatory, weather, transportation providers, and port operations to ensure timely alerts of sudden disruptive events
• New technologies that create material and supply network visibility, through GPS, alert systems, and predictive modeling technologies.
• Network models that are used for supply chain design, that take into account incident forecasting, probabilistic approaches for modeling risk, mitigation planning, redundant resources, and business continuity planning activities.

In exploring these issues, I will be sharing with you insights I’ve derived through interviews with a number of government and private sector companies, as well as work on recent SCRC student projects.  Additionally, we will be joined by a number of supply chain executives from other industries who will also share their insights into these issues.

• “A New Approach to Quantifying Supply Chain Risk”, including David Shillingford, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain Solutions, Verisk Analytics, Jersey City, NJ, and Sung In Marshall, Principal Analyst, Human Resource & Societal Risk Team, Verisk Maplecroft, Bath, UK.  Maplecroft is one of the world’s leading risk management portals, and this will be a fascinating introduction into the subject.
• Mr. Jason Schenker, Economist and President of Prestige Economics. A regular presenter at the SCRC meeting, Mr. Schenker will share his thoughts and views on the current health of the economy and the impact of current geopolitical events on global business conditions.  Bloomberg News has just released its rankings of forecast accuracy through the end of Q1 2015.  Once again, Bloomberg has ranked Prestige Economics a top forecaster of metals prices, energy prices, and foreign exchange rates.
• Dr. Stefan Wolff, CEO, 4FlowAG, Supply Chain Management, Berlin, Germany.  Stefan will share insights on managing risk in the transportation network, and how the role of a 4PL can help create visibility and real-time network redesign capabilities in response to changes in the transportation ecosystem.
• Mr. Mark Beasley, PhD., NC State Deloitte Professor of Enterprise Risk Management.  Mark will be talking about key trends in the enterprise risk environment, based on the ERM initiative in the Poole College of Management.
• Mr. Stephen Fecho Jr., Director of Value Chain Management, Merck & Co., Inc.  Steve will be sharing insights on how Merck developed and implemented a Center of Excellence on supply chain risk and intelligence, which he led.
• “Parallels between Supply Chain and Intelligence Risk Analysis”  I will be leading a panel discussion on this topic, including the following individuals:  Randy Pherson, CEO, Pherson Associates LLC, Stacey Kaminski, Associate, Pherson Associates LLC, Dr. Judith Johnson, Adjunct Behavioral / Social Scientist, Rand Corporation.  This will be a highly insightful meeting of the minds looking at how intelligence capabilities can be combined with SCM requirements for risk management.

In addition, we will also be featuring our student ‘gallery walk’ showcasing graduate and undergraduate supply chain practicum projects completed with industry partners this semester.  The meeting will also include formal student / company presentations, showcasing practicum projects with SCRC partner companies such as: Bayer CropScience, Biogen Idec, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Foodbuy, GlaxoSmithKline, John Deere, Lenovo, MetLife, NACCO, Novozymes, Quintiles, Revlon, R J Reynolds.

Can’t wait!!