Tag Archives: risks

10 Potential Risks in Cold Chain Management

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10 Potential Risks in Cold Chain Management

10 Potential Risks in Cold Chain Management

Socio-political unrest, labor shortages, wars, geological events, to pandemic concerns; these are just a few of the things that could affect changes in shipping patterns and/or logistics strategies.

Seemingly unrelated events halfway around the world can impact a shipment out for delivery, and there’s nothing your production or logistics teams can do about it. That’s the inherent volatility of a supply chain. It’s worse still for temperature-controlled logistics.

Therefore, the best you can do is mitigate the risk.

Shippers are urged to expect the worst and give it their best when handling high-value shipments, ensuring there’s enough care and contingency in place to mitigate unexpected risks.

The problem is, supply chain risk management is a costly affair, and that’s especially true for a cold chain. Nonetheless, it’s a necessary cost to avoid unnecessary loss, especially when you weigh the strategic importance of cold chains to improve, nay, save lives.

10 Things That Could Interrupt or Disrupt Your Cold Chain

Shipping high-value consignments over long distances within their prescribed temperature range — consistently and without excursion — is a collaborative effort.

  1. Pressure to Meet Cost Efficiencies in Cold Chain Management
  2. Lack of Uniform Infrastructure Globally Affecting Cold Chains
  3. Impact of Increased Regulations on Cold Chain Management
  4. Environmental Impact on Your Cold Chain
  5. Supplier Risk in Your Cold Chain
  6. Distribution/Delivery Risk in Cold Chain
  7. The Human Element in Cold Chain Risk Management
  8. Security Risk in Your Cold Chain
  9. Retailer Risk in Your Cold Chain
  10. Customer/Demand Risks to Your Cold Chain Logistics

How to Reduce Risks in Cold Chain Management

It’s no secret that cold chain assurance will cost you, but how can you run a lean cold chain while still mitigating the risks?

The key to dealing with unforeseen challenges is to prepare, plan ahead, and have enough contingencies, as well as a robust risk management strategy in place, supported by stringent processes and technologies.

How can you achieve that when the window to act and prevent losses can be a matter of hours or scant minutes?

You need a real-time cold chain monitoring system which can monitor your temperature-controlled shipments in-transit as well as in a warehouse.

Temperature data loggers only provide you with post-shipment audit trails, but with the number of weak links in your cold chain, you would need more actionable real-time data.

Read more at 10 Potential Risks in Cold Chain Management

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How Robotics Take the Supply Chain to the Next Level

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We all expected advanced robots to have a disruptive effect on industry — and now robotics has entered the supply chain, too. Some of the ways robotics will advance and reinvent supply chain operations and management are fairly straightforward, while others have been a little more unexpected. Below are four major ways robotics are already taking the supply chain to the next level — complete with specific technologies and implications for each one.

Robots Assume Customer-Facing Roles

Sometimes talking about supply chain operations makes it sound like something that happens away from the public eye. That’s far from the truth, because there are two major points along the average product journey where robots are poised to make a dramatic entrance.

Selective Automation Reduces Injury and Error Risks

One of the greatest supply chain robotics trends to come about so far is selective automation. Far from replacing human jobs outright, selective automation is helping us organize our efforts more effectively by getting people out of dangerous or risky environments, or out of the pilot’s seat of heavy equipment, or away from tedious and error-prone tasks.

Bolt-on Autonomy for Vehicles

There’s an emerging and appealing middle-ground between replacing machinery outright with automated versions and retrofitting your existing equipment, including vehicles, with technology that allows it to operate autonomously.

New Types of Human Jobs

This is not a specific technology. Instead, it’s a cumulative benefit of the technologies we’ve discussed here, as well as many others that are coming of age. All of them come with some welcome reassurance: We’re not obsolete quite yet.

The Supply Chain’s Bright Future

Each one of the benefits of robotics we’ve talked about is helping our global supply chains and all their operators realize a future where machines don’t reduce our quality of life, but rather help us better manage our resources and time. The intelligent application of robotics is one major piece of that puzzle.

Read more at How Robotics Take the Supply Chain to the Next Level

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The Big Interview: Ian Livsey, CEO, Institute of Risk Management

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Every business in all sections of the economy has risks. Companies need not only look within their own organisation when it comes to managing risk, but also to things that could influence it on the outside.

In his first interview since joining the Institute of Risk Management (IRM) as its new chief executive, Ian Livsey tells me companies should be looking at the wider issues in the supply chain when it comes to managing risk. And one of the key risks he believes businesses face there is from human trafficking and modern-day slavery.

Figures from the International Labour Organisation show almost 21 million people worldwide are been victims of forced labour, generating $150 billion in illegal profits per year, with almost 19 million of these being exploited by private individuals or enterprises and two million by state or rebel groups.

In the UK, a survey last year by the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) of British businesses revealed nearly 75 per cent of supply chain professionals admitted they had “zero visibility” of the first stages of their supply chain. Eleven per cent acknowledged it was “likely” that slave labour was used at some point in the process.

Says Livsey: “Wider society does not quite understand human trafficking is a serious issue. You could be a hotel, restaurant, food manufacturer or a construction site – it is quite possible you’ll have a risk in your supply chain on trafficked labour. Businesses need to think forward about what these risks might be.

Read more at The Big Interview: Ian Livsey, CEO, Institute of Risk Management

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