Author: John Manners-Bell
ISBN No: 9780749471101
Review date: 05/05/2024
No of pages: 265
Publisher: Kogan Page
Publisher URL:
http://www.koganpage.com/editions/supply-chain-risk/9780749471101
Year of publication: 30/10/2014
Brief:
Supply Chain Risk: Understanding Emerging Threats to Global Supply Chains
Whether you are a security person working in a port, a warehouse or for a retailer, a guide to supply chain risks is helpful. Because if you aren’t working for a business with a supply chain, the chances are you are in someone else’s supply chain, writes Mark Rowe.
A common call to private security is to make itself relevant and valuable to the business it is serving. Hence the fields of risk and more recently resilience. One useful way to approach security is through the supply chain – which might also be a fruitful career. As the author John Manners-Bell sets out early on, supply chains are if anything ever more exposed to threats, ‘especially in emerging markets’. Hence armed guards on ships to counter pirates, for instance. By the way if you work in emerging markets, you may want to wait for or look out for his next book that he is about to start writing; ‘Logistics and Supply Chains in Emerging Markets’. He’s a logistics man by background and founder of Transport Intelligence, a market research company and consultancy.
In other words, not a directly security person, which is all the more intriguing that in Supply Chain Risk he writes so much about subjects common to private security: theft (from trucks and airports for example); corruption (at toll points or by governments); organised crime; terrorism; the cyber threat (because physical disruption to the chain is ‘only part of the problem’).
As Manners-Bell points out, corruption ‘is not a subject which many companies are willing to discuss’, but quotes the World Economic Forum (WEF) description of corruption as ‘the widespread and deep-rooted abuse of entrusted power for private gain’ and as ‘the single greatest obstacle to economic and social development’. Logistics, he goes on, is so vulnerable to corruption because of Customs officials, often poorly paid. Customs staff might not only seek bribes, but may be the target from organised criminals wanting to smuggle goods. As for how to deal with corrupt Customs officials, he offers the WEF’s best practice. In this section as elsewhere the author offers case studies. Two that readers might find of most interest are ‘major defence logistics corruption in Afghanistan’ and, on resilience, ‘how Cisco manages risk’. The IT company we are told regards its supply chain as ‘a core business challenge’, not ‘just a logistics problem’. And in case you think the best practice is all very well but it’s not going to get shipments delivered on time, see the case study of conflict-free minerals for HP from Congo.
This snappy book that covers plenty of ground ought to convince the security reader that supply chains are not ‘just logistics’; security managers can be a help; and in doing so can both help themselves and their departments. More than many books, this is useful to read even if you don’t feel supply chains are much to do with your job; it might make you think more widely about how business is done, and done well now we are globalised.
Supply Chain Risk: Understanding Emerging Threats to Global Supply Chains, by John Manners-Bell. paperback, published 2014 by Kogan Page, £44.99. ISBN 9780749471101.
Visit www.koganpage.com and http://johnmannersbell.com.
