@Risk

There’s a growing labor shortage in China, and analysts aren’t exactly sure why.

According to The Wall Street Journal’s blog “China Real Time Report:”

Various domestic media reports put the labor supply gap at around a million people in Guangzhou and neighboring cities such as Dongguan, legendary centers of China’s export boom in the past three decades. Numerous assembly lines and construction sites are sitting idle while anxious employers have raised salaries by more than 30% but still can’t attract enough applicants.

Shen Hong, the author of the post, suggests that at least part of the problem may stem from the fact that new-generation migrant workers aren’t interested in tough basic jobs like construction any more.  The Chinese government has reformed policies and modernized farming to such an extent that rural jobs now compete favorably with work in the city. In addition, second-tier inland cities are experiencing economic booms of their own, and workers may prefer these alternative locations simply because they’re closer to home. Lastly, China’s improved standard of living, in general, means that young workers are less apt to accept the hardships of working in the city, Hong says. (more…)

The most cost-efficient US retailers manage many of their supply chain operations internally, and their costs in this area are 22 percent less than the median, according to new research from Deloitte Consulting LLP.

The research, conducted by Deloitte’s Global Benchmarking Center, was designed to quantify store operations and general and administrative (SGA) cost-improvement opportunities in retail. The study included more than 60 high-profile retail organizations and analyzed retail-specific functions such as store operations, merchandising, supply chain and marketing across 120 different performance metrics.

I found it intriguing that, in addition to their strategic supply chain management, Deloitte also found that low-cost performers differentiate themselves from median performers with: (more…)

Doug Cornelius writes a blog called “Compliance Building,” and he has done a fantastic job of summarizing sessions from this week’s Global Ethics Summit 2010, hosted by Dow Jones and Ethisphere.

In today’s increasingly complex and often unpredictable business environment, corporations are taking a long, hard look at their compliance practices. After all, effective compliance is a fundamental component of any supplier risk management program.  It reduces the likelihood of an offense.  And in some cases, it also can mitigate penalties (and negative perception) if noncompliance does occur. The conference was designed to help companies learn about current trends and best practices so that they can conduct business both successfully and ethically. (more…)

Most of the posts on this blog are focused on building awareness about the growing number of supply chain risks embedded in today’s complex and unpredictable global business environment.

This post, however, will take a slightly different tack. Rather than talk about potential problems, I’m going to highlight a solution:

Today, Aravo is launching Supplier Risk QuickStart, a software and services package to help you jumpstart a supplier risk management program.

Aravo Supplier Risk QuickStart identifies and analyzes risk for critical suppliers, and provides an expandable foundation for managing the identified threats. The solution can be implemented in 60 days or less for a fixed price of $50,000, which includes all software, services, training and support.

For example, Aravo Supplier Risk QuickStart provides: (more…)

Having a hard time waking up this Monday morning? Here are a few alarming statistics that I think may provide just the jolt you need:

Last month, Symantec  Corp. surveyed 2,100 enterprise CIOs, CISOs and IT managers from 27 countries and found that a whopping three-fourths of them had experienced cyber attacks in the past 12 months. More than one-third (36 percent) rated the attacks somewhat/highly effective, and worse still, more than one-quarter (29 percent) reported attacks have increased over the past year.

These attacks cost enterprise businesses an average of $2 million per year, and when you put all of this information together,  it’s no surprise that the 2010 State of Enterprise Security study also found that 42 percent of the survey respondents rate security as their top issue. (See graphic above.)

In addition, Symantec discovered that: (more…)