Why It Matters. It’s not enough to excel at a steady state — firms also need the resilience to respond to irregular operations and conditions. Systems thinking can help. Fresh off a year-plus of supply chain disruptions and irregular operations precipitated by the global pandemic, organizations should make time to rethink resiliency and risk management....

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Why It Matters. MIT Sloan experts offer a systematic approach to organizational resilience that can help leaders manage risk and rebound rapidly when catastrophic events strike. Consider the recent system failures at Southwest Airlines that put the brakes on holiday travel. Or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the Norfolk Southern freight train derailment, both of which rapidly became...

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Structural shifts in the labor market have left companies struggling to recruit and retain workers. But a set of concrete actions can help address this imbalance across value chains. As the US economy recovers post-pandemic, demand for labor has outstripped supply. Companies are facing the “Great Attrition,” coupled with increased competition for labor. The transportation and...

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Precautionism; The quest for resilience involves reaching for facts, friends and fortification When covid-19 led to a scramble for face masks, Lloyd Armbrust saw America’s shortage as “a really dumb problem to have”. But after his company’s first face mask came off the production line in Austin, Texas, he faced problems of his own. A...

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In this episode, Ron and Joseph discuss the supply chain and logistical challenges that are supposedly global in nature. Certainly, the news reports coming from the United States and as witnessed from producer to consumer indicate there is severe strain. But the news coming from other parts of the world and accompanying experiences tell quite...

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With Southern California seaports overburdened by commercial ships and pandemic and supply-driven delays in moving cargo, the Navy agreed to allow cargo-carrying vessels to use one of its military wharves at Port Hueneme, Calif. Port Hueneme is the only deep-water port sited between San Francisco and Los Angeles that can support the heavy, large commercial...

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We test three prevailing hypotheses about American business Concerns about the health of American business are many and varied. Chief executives are chastised for their apparent short-termism. Their companies are berated for fetishising shareholders over everyone and everything else. Elon Musk, boss of Tesla, a maker of electric cars, grumbles about a surfeit of business-school...

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New research shows how resilient organizations thrived through the pandemic. Here’s how to use those lessons to craft a better approach to how work gets done across time (real and asynchronous) and space (digital and physical). In May 2020, we published an article arguing that the return to the workplace was a new muscle that organizations...

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Wherever you live or work, stress is on the rise. According to the International Labour Organization, workers in developed and developing countries are facing increasing strain at work. The onslaught of mounting stressors include global challenges, such as climate change, terrorism, and political turmoil – as well as personal and professional challenges, such as illnesses, job changes,...

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Summery: Massachusetts-based Shawmut scrambled to expand production to meet the soaring demand for N95 masks and hospital gowns during the pandemic. Its experiences illustrates a crucial point that policymakers should take to heart: Once a country loses its industrial commons points — the capabilities needed to support the development and production of many goods —...

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Resilience comes not from autarky but from diverse sources of supply For the best part of a week, the Suez canal was blocked by a 200,000-tonne metaphor. The Ever Given is not just one of the world’s biggest container ships, it is also the emblem of a backlash that accuses globalisation of going too far....

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(Reuters) – Toyota may have pioneered the just-in-time manufacturing strategy but when it comes to chips, its decision to stockpile what have become key components in cars goes back a decade to the Fukushima disaster. After the catastrophe severed Toyota’s supply chains on March 11, 2011, the world’s biggest automaker realised the lead-time for semiconductors...

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Summary.   When shortages of PPE and other medical supplies hit in the early months of the pandemic, tens of thousands of domestic producers — from individual to large companies in other industries — sprang into action and made a huge difference. They should not be forgotten after the pandemic is over. Health care organizations should factor them...

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When redesigning a supply-chain organization, it’s intuitive to look to successful companies’ design choices. But our research finds that other factors correlate better to bottom-line performance. How do decisions about the design of supply-chain organizations affect the overall performance of a business? We recently analyzed the supply-chain organizations of more than 50 companies in a...

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In this episode of Supercharged Supply Chain, Ron and Joseph will discuss the notion of “resiliency”.  How to build a robust enough supply chain so that any shocks can be recognized before they become a critical threat and, if the threats become a reality, how can a company best prepare to cope and avoid possible...

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Today I invite to State of Readiness, Brian Strobel who is the VP of Corporate Quality at Sierra Nevada Corporation (the aerospace company, not the beer guys) and author of the upcoming book, “Pursuing Excellence: A Values-Based, Systems Approach to Help Companies Become More Resilient” (2021), in addition to his previous book, “Leading Change from Within: A...

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Our supply chains operate in a world that is full of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity; a VUCA world where; V = Volatility: there is a lack of stability with what being known today changes often without warning. U = Uncertainty: there is a lack of knowing all of the variables and being able to accurately predict operating conditions....

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Life is a never-ending stream of decisions.  From the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to sleep, we are making decisions.  Even the very act of waking up and going to sleep is a decision.  After all, we don’t have to wake up or go to sleep; we make...

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Emerging from the pandemic, tomorrow’s successful businesses will make themselves more resilient to unexpected crises. They will intensify the use of digital technologies in cloud computing, cyber security, cognitive and artificial intelligence tools and the Internet of Things. Empowered with these tools, they will also have greater flexibility in managing costs and the agility to...

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