Supply chains weak links

Regulators and customers require assurance in consistency of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturing operations. Today s manufacturing supply chains require multiple sites in varying locations to produce a product. Quality systems must be perceived as an integral part of the value chain. This requires that all sites be compliant in their operations and systems. Strong areas in one location do not make up for weak or absent systems in another location. Fines are levied and business is made or lost based on the individual site or weakest link in the supply chain. Management must have a mechanism to measure its processes, and a comprehensive QMS is the mechanism to demonstrate capability. 

Similarly, crime networks can be disrupted by identifying the weak links in a criminal commodity chain, or by targeting those actors whose skills are in relatively short supply. For example, in 2000/2001, Australian law enforcement was able to significantly disrupt local heroin trafficking networks by focusing on the relatively small number of brokers who brought together suppliers, financiers, skilled traffickers, and street distributors. This tack would be less successful where the skills needed to conduct the criminal activity, as well as the incentives to do so, are widespread. 

Develop a map of the supply chain for your organization. Did you identify any weak links in the process What were they ... 

Another capacity constraint is the information technology capability. Recent efforts by Telecoms San Frontiers (in Sri Lanka for example) suggests that adding to wireless or telecommunications capability may boost an important weak link in the supply chain and act as an externality for everyone involved. 

A weak link. Many of the projects implemented in this period were hastily defined and implemented. Knowledge of software and supply chain systems was scarce and the rate of change was rapid. Today s supply chain leader has inherited many of these poorly designed systems from the prior decade. 

Links can be of two types. Eirst, links are the ways partners in the supply chain coordinate their joint enterprise. Links can include any of the supply chain components — physical, information, financial, or knowledge flow — and the business rules that go with them. Strong links lead to a well-coordinated effort weak ones to an uncoordinated effort. Links are also... 

RECOMMENDATION DHS should support research to determine the combinations of incentives and disincentives that would hest encourage the private sector to invest in safety and security. This will require research to identify the nature of the interdependencies and weak links in the supply chain and consideration of puhlic-private partnerships to encourage voluntary adoption of protective measures hy the weakest links in the chain. 

Weak links in the safety and security of the chemical infrastructure and supply chain networks can compromise the entire system. Given the decentralized nature of many parts of the supply chain due to distributed ownership and control, it may be difficult to coordinate risk-reducing measures across the system. Appropriate cost-effective measures must be identified to reduce risks from terrorism when there are interdependencies in the system. Strategies involving private-public partnerships can be developed to encourage firms to adopt these measures. These strategies include a combination of such measures as economic incentives, third-party inspections, insurance, and well-enforced regulations and standards. 

The more units in the network that do not invest in security, the less incentive will any specific unit in the system have to invest in protection. In other words, if one wants to protect the entire supply chain it requires coordination between all units in the system through either the private sector or some type of public sector intervention. That is, weak links may lead to suboptimal behavior by everyone. By coordinating the actions of all units in the supply chain, each firm will be better off because its expected profits will increase and society will be better off because the risks of disruption will be lower. 

Economic studies to explore the interdependencies of the supply chain, determine how these impact decision making on security measures, and determine the least secure links in the chain is appropriate. DHS s National Assets Database and its ongoing Risk Analysis for Critical Assets Protection (RAMCAP) analysis should be useful in identifying units that represent weak links in the security of the chemical supply chain. ... 

Weak links between partners in the supply chain... 

A good example is the impact just-in-time supply chains have on a production system. Automotive assembly lines can grind to a halt if even a minor supplier has a production interruption. The situation is not confined to just-in-time situations. It s not uncommon for top-level operations managers to patrol their storerooms with shortage lists in hand — even with several months inventory in the warehouse They are the victims of weak links either in their supplier base, their ability to stay in touch with that supplier base, or in their own abilities to understand and cover their needs. 

Stauffer D (2003) Risk The weak link in your supply chain. Harvard Management Update March 3-5. 

National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, Ensuring Safe Food from Production to Consumption 2 (1998) Dennis G. Maki, Coming to Grips with Food-home Infection—Peanut Butter, Peppers, and Nationwide Salmonella Outbreaks, 360 New Eng. J. Med. 949 (2009) Ben Worthen, Weak Links in the Food (Supply) Chain, WSJ, June 24, 2008, at B5. 

At the chain level, we found a certain contractual weakness of the breeding farms in comparison to the processing enterprises. The traditional wholesale channel shows either logistic problems or a scarce product positive valuation, which are linked also to an insufficient supply concentration at the production level. For such reason, not only the processing firms but also some breeding farms have begun to diversify the sale ehannels. 

This additional energy supply applies only to monomer units that are sufficiently far away from chain ends and does not affect significantly the degradation of side groups. The latter can, however, cause the degradation of the main chain, when the bond linking the main chain to its substituents is weak, the process then corresponds to a chain reaction. 

A polymer molecule is composed of a large number of repeating units (each of which is known as a mer) supplied by a molecule known as a monomer in a process called polymerisation. The bonds between adjacent mers are strong covalent bonds but, in the absence of cross-linking, the chains themselves only interact through weak van der Waals forces. 

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