Both supply chain and logistics have a fragile side, even in the United States, a country with developed logistics. Fei Jia and Qu Ke, two professors in the Department of Supply Chain Management at the University of Michigan, have completed a survey to prove this point. They trace back to the reason why the supply chain has been fragile, because logistics or supply chain users rarely formulate effective crisis coping strategies, so when they encounter emergencies, they are at a loss immediately, so crisis management is also needed in the supply chain.
First, there is a potential crisis in the supply chain. According to the theory of crisis management, we should first analyze which crises lurk in the supply chain. The crisis of supply chain comes from many aspects. Simply put, it can be divided into two categories:
1, natural disasters, typhoons, earthquakes, floods, snowstorms, diseases and other damages and attacks from nature always threaten the safety of the supply chain. The fire in Philips was caused by the destruction of nature. Lightning in the storm increases the high voltage, and the sudden increase of voltage produces electric sparks to ignite the fire in the workshop. Another example is the "9.2 1" earthquake in Taiwan Province Province, which caused the global IT industry to shake. There is also SARS, which has caused many enterprises to face unprecedented crisis, and the service industries such as aviation, catering and tourism have been hit hard. At present, human beings are generally faced with the problem of environmental deterioration, and the frequency of natural disasters is getting higher and higher. As a force majeure, it will become a deadly killer in the supply chain.
2. Human factors
(1) Chain reaction of supply chain. A perfect supply chain system can save costs and speed up the production and development of products. However, because the supply chain is connected with suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and even customers at the same time, its structure is becoming more and more complex, and there are potential crises in every link. If a company has a problem, it may have a chain reaction, affecting many companies in the supply chain, and the destructive power will be greater than before. Especially when some enterprises in the industrial supply chain are exclusive suppliers, the potential crisis will be even greater. The emergence of exclusive suppliers in the supply chain is the result of various conflicts of interest. From the case of Ericsson, it can be seen that there is great risk in adopting the exclusive supplier policy: if one link goes wrong, the whole chain will collapse.
(2) The defects of 2)IT technology will restrict the supply chain to play its role. For example, network transmission speed, server stability and running speed, software design defects, viruses lurking in every corner.
(3) Problems in information transmission. When the scale and structure of the supply chain become larger and larger, the probability of information errors in the supply chain is increasing, such as information input errors, understanding errors and so on.
(4) Corporate culture. Different enterprises generally have their own corporate culture, which is manifested in the enterprise management concept, cultural system, and also in the professional quality and professionalism of employees. Different corporate cultures will lead to different views on the same problem, thus adopting different treatment methods and finally outputting different results. How to coordinate different corporate cultures among supply chain members is also a headache for all manufacturers in the supply chain.
(5) Political and economic turmoil. The most obvious are terrorist attacks and strikes. After the "9. 1 1" incident, all airports and ports in the United States were closed for several days, and flights and shipping schedules were all delayed, so goods could not enter the United States immediately. A few years after the "9. 1 1" incident, many crises broke out in the world, such as the financial turmoil in South America, the strike of American shipping workers and the Iraq war. In the era of globalization, a group of American maritime workers went on strike, which led to the interruption of global supply chain. In addition, the rapid economic growth will easily lead to the shortage of raw materials for enterprises, which will affect the normal production of enterprises, while the economic recession will increase the inventory cost of products.
Second, the supply chain crisis response measures From the above supply chain crisis, we can see that some crises are controllable and some are uncontrollable. According to the different characteristics of the crisis, we can take different countermeasures.
Generally speaking, supply chain crisis management can be divided into crisis prevention and emergency management. Crisis prevention refers to how to prevent the occurrence of crisis; Emergency management refers to what measures should be taken to reduce or transfer the crisis and minimize the possible harm caused by the crisis. Some dangers, such as key personnel, technology loss, key customer loss, product reputation and contract risk, can be prevented by crisis prevention measures; As for sudden crises such as terrorist attacks and SARS, only through emergency management can they be properly solved. Supply chain crisis management measures can be taken are:
1. Set up the crisis consciousness of "born of worry". Crisis consciousness does not mean all management consciousness that can prevent and deal with enterprise crisis. But specifically refers to the thinking consciousness of preventing and responding to the enterprise crisis. Bill Gates's "Microsoft 18 months will never go bankrupt", Zhang Ruimin's "My mood is on thin ice every day", Ren's "Huawei will always have winter, so it is better to prepare cotton-padded clothes" and the crisis view of all outstanding domestic business leaders are the essence of their successful corporate crisis consciousness.
2. Develop multiple supply channels and multi-regional supply channels, and track and evaluate the situation of suppliers. In order to ensure the stability of product supply, it is necessary to develop multiple supply channels in the supply chain, and not only rely on one supplier, otherwise once the manufacturer has problems, it will inevitably affect the normal operation of the whole supply chain. At the same time, when we rely on some supplied materials or products, we should also consider regional risks. For example, the war will interrupt the supply of raw materials in some areas, and if there is no supply in other areas, it will inevitably lead to a crisis. In addition to establishing multi-regional and multi-suppliers, it is also necessary to track the situation of each supplier and keep abreast of the supplier's supply situation.
3. Establish strategic partnership with suppliers. In the supply chain, strategic partnership means that manufacturers and suppliers are not only buyers and sellers, but more importantly, they are partners and even friends. Besides buying and selling, the two sides should have more contacts in other aspects. To establish a long-term cooperative relationship of trust, cooperation and open communication with suppliers in the supply chain, we must first analyze the market competition environment in order to find out which product market is effective in developing the supply chain cooperative relationship. We must know what is the demand of products now, what are the types and characteristics of products, so as to determine the needs of users and confirm whether it is necessary to establish a supply chain cooperation relationship. If the supply chain cooperation relationship has been established, it is necessary to fully investigate the supplier's performance, equipment management, human resources development, quality control, cost control, technology development, user satisfaction, delivery agreement, etc., which are likely to become factors affecting the security of the supply chain. Once the supplier is found to have problems, the supply chain strategy should be adjusted in time.
4. Establish various information transmission channels to prevent information risks. Manufacturers-consumers-suppliers play a variety of roles in the supply chain, their interaction is accelerating, and their relationship is becoming more and more complicated. This requires that the supporting network infrastructure must ensure the integrity, reliability and security of the data required by the supply chain.
5. Enterprises should formulate emergency management measures to deal with emergencies. Supply chain is a multi-link and multi-channel complex system, which is prone to some emergencies. In supply chain management, we should be fully prepared for emergencies. For some occasional but destructive events, emergency measures can be formulated in advance, the workflow for dealing with emergencies can be formulated, and a crisis management team can be established. Enterprises should set up an internal crisis management team as soon as possible, start the crisis emergency plan as soon as possible, and at the same time adapt to the situation and revise and enrich the crisis handling countermeasures at any time.
6. Relying on the third-party logistics to develop emergency logistics and reduce supply chain risks. In general, logistics is the difficulty and obstacle for enterprises to implement supply chain management. Many enterprises are generally used to their own logistics. This kind of logistics lacks professionalism, and when disasters or emergencies come, the ability to resist the crisis is limited, and enterprises will immediately be at a loss. Third-party logistics service providers usually have extensive and professional logistics networks. Once a line goes wrong, they can immediately change the route and still operate normally. Therefore, through cooperation with third-party logistics enterprises, enterprises can establish a reasonable division of supply chain, which can not only reduce operating costs and improve operating level, but also effectively spread risks and enhance their ability to resist crises. Anyway. The purpose of crisis management is not to 100% avoid the crisis, but to know which crises will be faced and which can be prevented, and what measures should be taken to reduce or transfer the crisis and minimize the possible harm caused by the crisis.
Third, how to use supply chain crisis management to turn "crisis" into "opportunity". 1, Dell's sense of crisis in the handling of the "9. 1 1" crisis, because Dell considered the worst situation, set up relevant plans, and finally saved the day. After the "9. 1 1" incident, the United States immediately announced the blockade of the airport and suspended all aircraft flying into the United States. This is undoubtedly the biggest crisis for Dell, which is based on global procurement. However, the crisis management team and the global supply chain supervision team established by Dell immediately came into play, working closely with the processing agents to find out the flying cargo planes, and transporting the notebook computers and other products mainly by air to other countries in the United States first, and then pulling them into the United States by freight. In the SARS crisis, in order to cope with the possible supply chain interruption, Dell took precautions before the outbreak of SARS climax and increased the inventory of its foundry. Dell's crisis management has been quite perfect, but it still maintains a high sense of crisis at all times, so that Dell can survive in the crisis and turn "crisis" into "opportunity". With every crisis, the processing ability of Dell's crisis management team is constantly improving. For a company like Dell, this crisis may be the beginning of new opportunities.
2. Efficient emergency management. 65438+1September 2, 19991day, an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 occurred in Jiji Town, Taiwan Province Province, and the power supply system was damaged. Chip production in Hsinchu Hi-tech Park, which has the highest fab density in Taiwan Province Province, suddenly came to a halt. The equipment of TSMC and other manufacturers was damaged, which seriously tested the applied materials company, the world's largest wafer equipment supplier. Within 3 minutes after the incident, Applied Materials Company immediately called members of the "Emergency Team" to the disaster site, and immediately completed the company's damaged recovery work at 7 pm that day. At the same time, the company quickly reported the disaster loss assessment report to the US headquarters. Headquarters immediately organized a safety assessment team of 18 people to arrive in Taiwan Province Province with testing equipment, and actively assisted customers in post-disaster reconstruction. In addition, the headquarters immediately mobilized equipment engineers from Japan, South Korea and other places to come to Taiwan to help customers complete production recovery as soon as possible, and set up a post-earthquake recovery project team in Taiwan Province Province to co-ordinate global material supply and help Taiwan Province Province recover after the disaster. The American Applied Materials Corporation has always established a crisis management emergency team. The company establishes task groups for each team member in a part-time manner, and conducts fixed drills every month, so that the emergency team can handle emergencies and disasters in an organized and efficient manner at any time. The company further established a "continuous operation plan" and worked out emergency operation details. The detailed rules define the types of crises that the company may encounter, various crisis handling processes, emergency contacts and contact information, and formulate emergency plans in advance to help the company and customers deal with the crisis in the fastest and most efficient way and minimize the impact.
3.nokia is ready. In March 2000, a lightning strike hit Philips' semiconductor factory in Albuquerque, USA, which triggered a fire. Dust destroyed millions of chips being produced in the factory. The fire almost destroyed the factory and changed the fate of the two largest mobile phone manufacturers in Europe, because 40% of the RF chips in this factory were ordered by Nokia and Ericsson. At that time, the market demand was at its peak. In the mid-1990s, in order to save costs, Ericsson simplified its supply chain, basically excluding backup suppliers, and there were no chips that other companies could produce. Philips' chip factory failed to supply them normally for several weeks, which led to the suspension of Ericsson's mobile phone production due to the shortage of parts. Due to the slow movement. Without timely and effective response, Ericsson witnessed the rapid loss of the market of millions of mobile phones. At that time, the mobile phone business lost $700 million, and finally had to reluctantly give up what one favours and outsource the mobile phone manufacturing. Strong logistics force made Nokia lucky to escape this disaster. Facing the sudden crisis, Nokia's chip purchasing department responded quickly and actively considered other sources of supply. Ollila, CEO of Nokia, spent two weeks persuading Danish companies to provide some factories as Nokia's supply backup. At the same time, Finns also redesigned the relevant modules and chips of mobile phones, and quickly found chip manufacturers in Japan and the United States. It took only five days from order preparation to production. In the following time, Nokia seized a lot of market share from Ericsson. A crisis shifted the dominant market power between two competitors.
Four. Conclusion Due to natural, political, economic and legal factors such as information asymmetry, information distortion and market uncertainty, the cooperation among enterprises in the supply chain will lead to various crises. Therefore, the supply chain needs crisis management. The above is only a preliminary theoretical discussion on supply chain management, and it will also involve the establishment of supply chain management system in practical application, which needs further study.