Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an update to the Supply Chain Volatility Index (SCVI), and expand on prior work by presenting a conceptual framework illustrating how firms can deal ...with persistent volatility, the ensuing risk and mitigate the cost implications for their supply chain operations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use long-term time series of secondary data to assemble a “basket” of key indicators that are relevant to the business context within which global supply chains operate. The authors also report on five years of feedback gained from presentations of the SCVI to scholars and practitioners.
Findings
Volatility has reduced from record levels experienced during the global financial crises, yet remains at levels considerably higher than prior to the crisis, with no sign of a return to the more stable conditions that prevailed when many current supply chain networks were designed.
Research limitations/implications
The authors reaffirm that new mental models are needed which embrace volatility as a factor in supply chain design, rather than seek to eradicate it in supply chain operations. Traditional static “network optimisation” based on a simple definition of low unit cost seems no longer appropriate under conditions of persistent volatility.
Practical implications
The authors provide a conceptual link of volatility, risk and cost in the supply chain, and outline how firms can develop a supply chain strategy by managing their exposure to volatility.
Originality/value
The authors challenge the common assumption that volatility invariably leads to risk and higher cost in the supply chain. Instead the authors argue that the supply chain structure can mitigate the exposure to supply chain risk. The authors introduce the concepts of recovery and resilience cost within a framework designed to help firms manage volatility-induced risk by minimising the adverse cost implications of volatility in their supply chains.
Purpose - An underlying principle of supply chain management is to establish control of the end-to-end process in order to create a seamless flow of goods. The basic idea is that variability is ...detrimental to performance as it causes cost in the form of stock-outs, poor capacity utilisation, and costly buffers. This paper questions this approach and argues that in the light of increasing turbulence a different approach to supply chain management is needed.Design methodology approach - The paper reports on the authors' work on a Supply Chain Volatility Index and shows how current supply chain practices may no longer fit the context most businesses now operate in - primarily because these practices were developed under assumptions of stability that no longer hold true. The paper illustrates the findings with case study evidence of firms that have had to adjust to various aspects of turbulence.Findings - The paper is able to show that most current supply chain management models emanate from a period of relative stability, and second, that there is considerable evidence that we will experience increasing turbulence in the future. This calls into question whether current supply chain models that feature some dynamic flexibility, yet are built on the general premise of control, will be suitable to meet the challenge of increased turbulence.Practical implications - It is argued that what is needed to master the era of turbulence is structural flexibility which builds flexible options into the design of supply chains. This marks a major departure from current thinking and will require revisiting the management accounting procedures that are used to evaluate different supply chain decisions. The paper presents guidelines on how to manage supply chains in the age of turbulence: by embracing volatility as an opportunity rather than viewing it as a risk, by understanding its nature and impact, and finally by shifting the exposure to risk by building hedges into the supply chain design.Originality value - The paper questions the fundamental premise upon which current supply chain models are built and proposes an alternative approach to build structural flexibility into supply chain decision making, which would create the level of adaptability needed to remain competitive in the face of turbulence.
The self-thinking supply chain Calatayud, Agustina; Mangan, John; Christopher, Martin
Supply chain management,
03/2019, Volume:
24, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Purpose
An emerging theme in the practitioner literature suggests that the supply chain of the future – enabled especially by developments in ICT – will be autonomous and have predictive ...capabilities, bringing significant efficiency gains in an increasingly complex and uncertain environment. This paper aims to both bridge the gap between the practitioner and academic literature on these topics and contribute to both practice and theory by seeking to understand how such developments will help to address key supply chain challenges and opportunities.
Design/methodology/approach
A multi-disciplinary, systematic literature review was conducted on relevant concepts and capabilities. A total of 126 articles were reviewed covering the time period 1950-2018.
Findings
The results show that both IoT and AI are the technologies most frequently associated with the anticipated autonomous and predictive capabilities of future supply chains. In addition, the review highlights a lacuna in how such technologies and capabilities help address key supply chain challenges and opportunities. A new supply chain model is, thus, proposed, one with autonomous and predictive capabilities: the self-thinking supply chain.
Originality/value
It is our hope that this novel concept, presented here for the first time in the academic literature, will help both practitioners to craft appropriate future-proofed supply chain strategies and provide the research community with a model (built upon multidisciplinary insights) for elucidating the application of new digital technologies in the supply chain of the future. The self-thinking supply chain has the potential in particular to help address some of today’s key supply chain challenges and opportunities.
Adaptive radiations offer an excellent opportunity to understand the eco-evolutionary dynamics of gut microbiota and host niche specialization. In a laboratory common garden, we compared the gut ...microbiota of two novel derived trophic specialist pupfishes, a scale-eater and a molluscivore, to closely related and distant outgroup generalist populations, spanning both rapid trophic evolution within 10 kya and stable generalist diets persisting over 11 Mya. We predicted an adaptive and highly divergent microbiome composition in the trophic specialists reflecting their rapid rates of craniofacial and behavioral diversification. We sequenced 16S rRNA amplicons of gut microbiomes from lab-reared adult pupfishes raised under identical conditions and fed the same high protein diet. In contrast to our predictions, gut microbiota largely reflected phylogenetic distance among species, rather than generalist or specialist life history, in support of phylosymbiosis. However, we did find significant enrichment of Burkholderiaceae bacteria in replicated lab-reared scale-eater populations. These bacteria sometimes digest collagen, the major component of fish scales, supporting an adaptive shift. We also found some enrichment of Rhodobacteraceae and Planctomycetia in lab-reared molluscivore populations, but these bacteria target cellulose. Overall phylogenetic conservation of microbiome composition contrasts with predictions of adaptive radiation theory and observations of rapid diversification in all other trophic traits in these hosts, including craniofacial morphology, foraging behavior, aggression, and gene expression, suggesting that the functional role of these minor shifts in microbiota will be important for understanding the role of the microbiome in trophic diversification.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Successful federal initiatives share a focus on tangible success stories, constant input and guidance from scientists, participation by a wide range of funders, ongoing interest from policy makers, ...and a broad and effective communications network. By comparing these elements of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative with other initiatives, we look at what needs to be done to sustain the BRAIN Initiative in the years to come.
Martin and Chun review the successful first phase of the U.S. BRAIN initiative and propose practices for insuring sustainability and success of the BRAIN initiative for the future.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Rapid adaptive radiation poses two distinct questions apart from speciation and adaptation: What happens after one speciation event and how do some lineages continue speciating through a rapid burst? ...We review major features of rapid radiations and their mismatch with theoretical models and speciation mechanisms. The paradox is that the hallmark rapid burst pattern of adaptive radiation is contradicted by most speciation models, which predict continuously decelerating diversification and niche subdivision. Furthermore, it is unclear if and how speciation-promoting mechanisms such as magic traits, phenotype matching, and physical linkage of coadapted alleles promote rapid bursts of speciation. We review additional mechanisms beyond ecological opportunity to explain rapid radiations: (
a
) ancient adaptive alleles and the transporter hypothesis, (
b
) sexual signal complexity, (
c
) fitness landscape connectivity, (
d
) diversity begets diversity, and (
e
) plasticity first. We propose new questions and predictions connecting microevolutionary processes to macroevolutionary patterns through the study of rapid radiations.
Today's marketplace is characterised by turbulence and uncertainty. Market turbulence has tended to increase for a number of reasons. Demand in almost every industrial sector seems to be more ...volatile than was the case in the past. Product and technology life-cycles have shortened significantly and competitive product introductions make life-cycle demand difficult to predict. At the same time the vulnerability of supply chains to disturbance or disruption has increased. It is not only the effect of external events such as wars, strikes or terrorist attacks, but also the impact of changes in business strategy. Many companies have experienced a change in their supply chain risk profile as a result of changes in their business models, for example the adoption of "lean" practices, the move to outsourcing and a general tendency to reduce the size of the supplier base. This paper suggests that one key element in any strategy designed to mitigate supply chain risk is improved "end-to-end" visibility. It is argued that supply chain "confidence" will increase in proportion to the quality of supply chain information.
Many assume that a person's right to education terminates with high school, and that higher education is a luxury addition. The conversation about education changes in palpable ways once we focus on ...higher education rather than the education we ordinarily think that citizens are due when they are children and teenagers. We see more talk about competition for university places, standardized testing, and elite admissions. We parse out the differences between the benefits of education for the individual and the burdens of public financial support for such an education. The move from educational provision for children to educational provision for adults marks a troubling transformation in this public conversation: from one about how it can improve the lives of all individuals, to one preoccupied with fairness, competition, merit, personal responsibility, and the sharing of benefits and burdens. Problems of status, stratification, and selectivity capture as much, if not more, of our attention than the question of what higher education institutions should aim to achieve. But why should it be so different, when it is no less essential? Obtaining a higher education degree can change the course of a person's life, providing them with vast opportunities that they could not access otherwise--in fact for many it is a prerequisite for fulfilling their personal and professional goals, or even being able to just make a living. Yet it is almost always framed as privilege, not a right--and a privilege many spend years or even decades paying for after their studies have ended. Our higher education systems are built on the presumption that this is all as it should be: that pursuing higher education is a choice some people make, but not something to which all of us are entitled. Christopher Martin turns this view on its head by arguing that higher education is in fact an unconditional, absolute right of all citizens in a free and open society. As he argues, a closer look at the value of education in a free and open society reveals that many of the challenges we see in higher education today can be attributed to the failure to recognize higher education as an individual right. Using concepts and ideas from liberal political philosophy, Martin shows that access to educational goods play a key role in helping citizens realize their self-determined goals. Higher education should be understood as a basic social institution responsible for ensuring that all citizens can access these goods. The necessary corrective, Martin argues, is simple: we need to stop allocating higher education to some, and allocate it to all who choose to pursue it. A readiness and willingness to learn should be the only qualification. Higher education should offer opportunities that benefit citizens with different interests and goals in life. Its foundational moral purpose should be to help citizens of all backgrounds to live better, freer lives.
Due to the increasing complexity and miniaturization of microelectronics, material interfaces are now the dominant source of thermal resistance in many integrated circuits and electronic devices. ...While the literature on thermal boundary resistance is extensive, the theory remains poorly understood. This is particularly true for the case of defects at the interface. Data and results on three defects at a Si|C interface are presented—an interstitial N pair and two different substitutional Ge's. It is found that the interstitial N pair, as well as one of the Ge defects, reduces thermal boundary conductivity considerably whereas the substitutional Ge placed directly at the interface is largely transparent.
For the first time, it is shown that a defect (substitutional Ge, red) is effectively transparent to heat flow across a material interface. The interface occurs at the junction of Si (cyan) and C (green) inside a nanowire. An interstitial NiNi is also studied, and as expected, increases Kapitza resistance associated with the defect.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Ecological opportunity is frequently proposed as the sole ingredient for adaptive radiation into novel niches. An additional trigger may be genome-wide hybridization resulting from "hybrid swarm." ...However, these hypotheses have been difficult to test due to the rarity of comparable control environments lacking adaptive radiations. Here I exploit such a pattern in microendemic radiations of Caribbean pupfishes. I show that a sympatric three species radiation on San Salvador Island, Bahamas diversified 1445 times faster than neighboring islands in jaw length due to the evolution of a novel scale-eating adaptive zone from a generalist ancestral niche. I then sampled 22 generalist populations on seven neighboring islands and measured morphological diversity, stomach content diversity, dietary isotopic diversity, genetic diversity, lake/island areas, macroalgae richness, and Caribbean-wide patterns of gene flow. None of these standard metrics of ecological opportunity or gene flow were associated with adaptive radiation, except for slight increases in macroalgae richness. Thus, exceptional trophic diversification is highly localized despite myriad generalist populations in comparable environmental and genetic backgrounds. This study provides a strong counterexample to the ecological and hybrid swarm theories of adaptive radiation and suggests that diversification of novel specialists on a sparse fitness landscape is constrained by more than ecological opportunity and gene flow.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
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