An outbreak of deadly COVID-19 virus has not only taken the lives of people but also severely crippled the economy. Due to strict lockdown, the manufacturing and logistics activities have been ...suspended, and it has affected the demand and supply of various products as a result of restrictions imposed on shopkeepers and retailers. Impacts of COVID-19 are observed ubiquitously in every type of units from different sectors. In this study, a simulation model of the public distribution system (PDS) network is developed with three different scenarios to demonstrate disruptions in the food supply chain. Difficulties have been increased in matching supply and demand in a vast network of PDS because of changing scenarios with the growth of infected cases and recovery. This paper also highlights the importance of a resilient supply chain during a pandemic. Our proposed simulation model can help in developing a resilient and responsive food supply chain to match the varying demand, and then further assist in providing decision-making support for rerouting the vehicles as per travel restrictions in areas. Paper has been summarised with significant highlights and including future research scope for developing a more robust food supply chain network.
Based on fieldwork among state officials, NGOs, politicians, and activists in Costa Rica and Brazil, A Future History of Water traces the unspectacular work necessary to make water access a human ...right and a human right something different from a commodity. Andrea Ballestero shows how these ephemeral distinctions are made through four technolegal devices—formula, index, list and pact. She argues that what is at stake in these devices is not the making of a distinct future but what counts as the future in the first place. A Future History of Water is an ethnographically rich and conceptually charged journey into ant-filled water meters, fantastical water taxonomies, promises captured on slips of paper, and statistical maneuvers that dissolve the human of human rights. Ultimately, Ballestero demonstrates what happens when instead of trying to fix its meaning, we make water’s changing form the precondition of our analyses.
This paper provides an early assessment of the implications of the COVID‐19 pandemic for food supply chains and supply chain resilience. The effects of demand‐side shocks on food supply chains are ...discussed, including consumer panic buying behaviors with respect to key items, and the sudden change in consumption patterns away from the food service sector to meals prepared and consumed at home. Potential supply‐side disruptions to food supply chains are assessed, including labor shortages, disruptions to transportation networks, and “thickening” of the Canada–U.S. border with respect to the movement of goods. Finally, the paper considers whether the COVID‐19 pandemic will have longer‐lasting effects on the nature of food supply chains, including the growth of the online grocery delivery sector, and the extent to which consumers will prioritize “local” food supply chains.
Abstrait
Cette note fournit une évaluation initiale des implications de la pandémie (Covid‐19) pour les chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire et pour la résilience des chaînes d'approvisionnement. L'effet des chocs liés à la demande sur les chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire est discuté, y compris les comportements d'achat de panique des consommateurs en ce qui concerne certains articles, et le transfert soudain de la consommation liée aux services alimentaires vers les repas préparés et consommés à la maison. Les perturbations potentielles du côté de l'offre des chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire sont évaluées, notamment les pénuries de main‐d'œuvre, les perturbations des réseaux de transport et une fluidité moindre des marchandises à la frontière canado‐américaine. Enfin, la note examine si la Covid‐19 aura des effets à plus long terme sur la nature des chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire, y compris la croissance du secteur de la livraison d'épicerie en ligne, et dans quelle mesure les consommateurs accorderont la priorité aux chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire «locales».
Water Diplomacy Islam, Shafiqul; Susskind, Lawrence E.
2013, 20120726, 2012, 2012-07-26
eBook
Water is the resource that will determine the wealth, welfare, and stability of many countries in the twenty-first century. This book offers a new approach to managing water that will overcome the ...conflicts that emerge when the interactions among natural, societal, and political forces are overlooked. At the heart of these conflicts are complex water networks. In managing them, science alone is insufficient and so is policy-making that doesn't take science into account. Solutions will only emerge if a negotiated or diplomatic approach that blends science, policy, and politics is used to manage water networks.
The authors show how open and constantly changing water networks can be managed successfully using collaborative adaptive techniques to build informed agreements among disciplinary experts, water users with conflicting interests, and governmental bodies with countervailing claims.
Shafiqul Islam is an engineer with over twenty-five years of practical experience in addressing water issues. Lawrence Susskind is founder of MIT's Environmental Policy and Planning Program and a leader of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Together they have developed a text that is relevant for students and experienced professionals working in a variety of engineering, science, and applied social science fields. They show how new thinking about water conflict can replace the zero-sum battles that pit experts, politicians, and stakeholders against each other in counter-productive ways. Their volume not only presents the key elements of a theory of water diplomacy; it includes excerpts and commentary from more than two dozen seminal readings as well as practice exercises that challenge readers to apply what they have learned.
This study suggests a new approach to supply chain (SC) disruption risk management where SC behaviour is less dependent on the certainty of our knowledge about the environment and its changes. The ...unpredictability of the occurrence of disruption and its magnitude suggests that designing SCs with a low need for 'certainty' may be as important, if not more so, than predetermined disruption control strategies. In this setting, this study calls for the development of a new perspective in SC disruption management, i.e. low-certainty-need (LCN) SCs. A number of principles and concepts is derived in recent, relevant literature to structure the characteristics of the LCN framework and its management. Structural variety, process flexibility, and parametrical redundancy are identified as key LCN SC characteristics that ensure efficient disruption resistance as well as recovery resource allocation. Two efficiency capabilities of the LCN SC are shown, i.e. low need for uncertainty consideration in planning decisions and low need for recovery coordination efforts based on a combination of lean and resilient elements. The results allow the identification of an LCN SC framework, concepts and technologies for its implementation as well as missing themes and new research questions which contribute to a better understanding of SC disruption risks. Special focus is directed on the digital technology usage in the LCN framework implementation.
The development of natural product-derived drugs has some unique problems associated with the process, which can be best described as the "problem of supply". In this short review, four examples are ...given demonstrating how the "supply problem" was overcome using as examples the development of Picato® from a plant, Kyprolis® modified from a microbial metabolite, Halaven® a totally synthetic compound based on a marine sponge metabolite and Yondelis® isolated from a marine tunicate and now known to be from an as yet uncultured microbe in the tunicate. The methods used are described in each case and show how all scientific disciplines are necessary to succeed. All of these are antitumor agents and the time involved ranged from a low of 13years to greater than 29years from the initial identification of an active compound.
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate how blockchain has moved beyond cryptocurrencies and is being deployed to enhance visibility and trust in supply chains, their limitations and potential impact.
...Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative analysis are undertaken via case studies drawn from food companies using semi-structured interviews.
Findings
Blockchain is demonstrated as an enabler of visibility in supply chains. Applications at scale are most likely for products where the end consumer is prepared to pay the premium currently required to fund the technology, e.g. baby food. Challenges remain in four areas: trust of the technology, human error and fraud at the boundaries, governance, consumer data access and willingness to pay.
Research limitations/implications
The paper shows that blockchain can be utilised as part of a system generating visibility and trust in supply chains. Research directs academic attention to issues that remain to be addressed. The challenges pertaining to the technology itself we believe to be generalisable; those specific to the food industry may not hold elsewhere.
Practical implications
From live case studies, we provide empirical evidence that blockchain provides visibility of exchanges and reliable data in fully digitised supply chains. This provides provenance and guards against counterfeit goods. However, firms will need to work to gain consumer buy-in for the technology following repeated past claims of trustworthiness.
Originality/value
This paper provides primary evidence from blockchain use cases “in the wild”. The exploratory case studies examine application of blockchain for supply chain visibility.
The new division of labor Levy, Frank; Murnane, Richard J
2004, 2012., 20121126, 2012, 2004-01-01, 20040101
eBook, Book
Die Autoren gehen von der Tatsache aus, dass sich die Situation auf dem Arbeitsmarkt in den letzten Jahren grundlegend verändert hat: Selbst nach einer Rezession werden die durch die Automatisierung ...oder die Verlagerung in Niedriglohnländer verloren gegangenen Arbeitsplätze nicht wieder entstehen. Analysiert werden die Einflüsse der Informationstechnik auf die Arbeitsplatzstruktur, insbesondere die Möglichkeiten der Problemlösung und Kommunikation. Es wird dabei die These abgeleitet, dass komplexe Kommunikation nach wie vor eine Domäne menschlichen Handels sein wird, und Computer auf diesem Gebiet keine Alternative darstellen. Die Gesellschaft muss sich auf diese Veränderungen einzustellen, indem eine Arbeitsteilung zwischen automatisierten Jobs und gut bezahlten und hochqualifizierten Arbeitsplätze akzeptiert und gestaltet wird. Arbeitsplätze, deren Schwerpunkt auf komplexen Problemlösungen sowie auf interpersonaler Kommunikation liegt, werden in großer Zahl entstehen. Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: deskriptive Studie. (IAB).
Recent hydrological modelling and Earth observations have located and quantified alarming rates of groundwater depletion worldwide. This depletion is primarily due to water withdrawals for ...irrigation, but its connection with the main driver of irrigation, global food consumption, has not yet been explored. Here we show that approximately eleven per cent of non-renewable groundwater use for irrigation is embedded in international food trade, of which two-thirds are exported by Pakistan, the USA and India alone. Our quantification of groundwater depletion embedded in the world's food trade is based on a combination of global, crop-specific estimates of non-renewable groundwater abstraction and international food trade data. A vast majority of the world's population lives in countries sourcing nearly all their staple crop imports from partners who deplete groundwater to produce these crops, highlighting risks for global food and water security. Some countries, such as the USA, Mexico, Iran and China, are particularly exposed to these risks because they both produce and import food irrigated from rapidly depleting aquifers. Our results could help to improve the sustainability of global food production and groundwater resource management by identifying priority regions and agricultural products at risk as well as the end consumers of these products.
Research on the phenomenon of supply chain resilience Hohenstein, Nils-Ole; Feisel, Edda; Hartmann, Evi ...
International journal of physical distribution & logistics management,
03/2015, Letnik:
45, Številka:
1/2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Purpose
– This paper provides a robust and structured literature review on supply chain resilience (SCRES), the supply chain’s ability to be prepared for unexpected risk events, responding and ...recovering quickly to potential disruptions to return to its original situation or grow by moving to a new, more desirable state. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extant research through focussed questions and provide an insightful framework with propositions to guide further publications and identify future research needs.
Design/methodology/approach
– The findings underlie a systematic literature review methodology requiring a robust method of literature analysis. The sand cone model is adopted to develop a comprehensive SCRES framework.
Findings
– The literature review reveals a strong need for an overarching SCRES definition and a clear terminology for its building elements. It indicates that most research has been qualitative and lacks in assessing and measuring SCRES performance.
Originality/value
– This paper contributes a structured overview of 67 peer-reviewed articles from 2003 to 2013 on an emerging area of supply chain research. The review formulates an overarching definition of SCRES, groups and synthesizes the various SCRES elements into proactive and reactive strategies for the ex-ante/ex-post disruption stage and illustrates SCRES measurement through performance metrics. It provides a comprehensive SCRES framework with propositions and indicates gaps in the literature to target for further development.
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