For supply chain executives, recent years have been notable for major supply chain disruptions that have highlighted vulnerabilities for individual companies and for entire industries globally. (The Japanese tsunami in 2011 left the world auto industry reeling for months. Thailand’s 2011 floods affected the supply chains of computer manufacturers dependent on hard disks. The 2010 eruption of a volcano in Iceland disrupted millions of air travelers and affected time-sensitive air shipments.) This excellent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review (Spring, 2014), by Professors Sunil Chopra and ManMohan Sodhi, is worth the 23 minutes it will take you to read it–especially if you teach Chapter 11 and Supp.11 in our text.

Today’s managers, they write, know that they need to protect their supply chains from serious and costly disruptions, but the most obvious solutions — increasing inventory, adding capacity at different locations and having multiple suppliers — undermine efforts to improve supply chain cost efficiency. While managers appreciate the impact of supply chain disruptions, they have done very little to prevent such incidents or mitigate theirimpacts.This is because solutions to reduce risk mean little unless they are weighed against supply chain cost efficiency. Financial performance is, we know, what pays the bills.

Supply chain efficiency, which is directed at improving a company’s financial performance, is different from supply chain resilience, whose goal is risk reduction. Although both require dealing with risks, recurrent risks (such as demand fluctuations) require companies to focus on efficiency in improving the way they match supply and demand, while disruptive risks require companies to build resilience despite additional cost.

The authors suggest two strategies for reducing supply chain fragility through containment while simultaneously improving financial performance: (1) segmenting the supply chain or (2) regionalizing the supply chain. In many instances, though, reducing disruption risk involves higher costs. The reason executives are reluctant to deal with supply chain risk comes from the perception that risk reduction will reduce cost efficiency significantly. Managers can do much to ensure that loss of cost efficiency is minimal while the risk reduction is substantial by avoiding excessive concentration of resources like suppliers or capacity. And nudging trade-offs in favor of less concentration by overestimating the probability of disruptions can be much better in the long run compared to underestimating or ignoring the likelihood of disruptions.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Jamba Juice, McDonald’s, and several other food chains are starting to serve their drinks in paper cups. Drinks stay just as hot and cold in  new doubled-walled paper cup as in the old non-biodegradeable foam variety. The paper industry likes it a lot too. Demand for paper cups is growing 5% a year. Environmental concerns from consumers and new bans on plastic foam in more U.S. cities are prompting food chains to make a switch, reports The Wall Street Journal (April 11, 2014).

Jamba Juice said last year it would adopt paper cups for its smoothies and other cold drinks “to improve our environmental footprint.” McDonald’s is replacing plastic-foam cups with double-walled McCafe paper cups at all 14,000 McCafes across the country. The company says it is trying to be more environmentally conscious and cut costs on trash. Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc. has said it is testing paper cups. These companies join Starbucks, which has been using paper for years.

Environmental advocates say paper is easier on the environment than plastic foam because the latter tends to break up in landfills and then is mistaken by animals for food. Plastic foam is difficult to recycle unless it is kept clean and separated from other types of plastics—so many plants in the U.S. don’t take it. It isn’t biodegradable.

Paper cups are slightly more expensive than foam. Extras like double walls for insulation or plant-based lining to make it compostable add to the price. While the paper cups cost a few cents more, McDonald’s says it will make up the difference in the trash. Most of the chain’s waste is paper-based– wraps, fry cartons and Big Mac boxes—so paper cups can go into the same trash bin, and eventually into recycling bins.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

“JPMorgan’s banks of the future will fundamentally upend Americans’ relationship with banking,” writes The New York Times (April 2, 2014). They will offer more services for customers in far less space. The layout of the new banks has gained urgency across the industry as a growing number of customers use mobile technologies to conduct many traditional banking functions, like check deposits and paying bills, without ever stepping into a branch. Either the bank branches adapt or they go the way of video stores.

JPMorgan is not the only institution trying to reimagine the traditional bank branch with its long rows of tellers standing behind glass. Across Wall Street, banks are looking to slash expenses and wring more profit from retail banking. Banking giants like Bank of America and Citigroup are working to overhaul branches with the goal of more closely resembling an Apple store, where employees holding tablets and other high-tech gadgets tend to customers.

Last year, Wells Fargo opened a 1,200-square-foot “minibranch” in Washington. JPMorgan, whose legacy bank branches averaged about 4,400 square feet several years ago, has already slimmed them down to 2,500 to 3,500 square feet. That firm began by convening focus groups to determine what customers wanted. The findings: space and simplicity.

Within the new branches, the teller line is no longer the centerpiece. That has been moved to the side. The focal point is now occupied by express banking kiosks, a kind of souped-up A.T.M. Aside from their new look, the machines allow more customized transactions. Customers can, for example, opt to get cash in any amount and any denomination, not just in $20 bills or $50 bills. The new machines are safer, too. Unlike traditional A.T.M.s that must be restocked with cash, these units replenish their own supplies from deposits, cutting down on the amount of times that employees have to ferry money to the vaults

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.