@Risk

Recent global events (civil unrest, volcanoes, the Japanese earthquake, etc.) have focused new attention on the importance of supply chain resilience. Incidents like these underscore how globalization has connected companies, suppliers, consumers and the world around them in new ways.

How should manufacturers respond to this intricate interdependence?  Are there specific steps they must take to achieve excellence in today’s connected marketplace?

A new whitepaper from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) deep dives into these questions and concludes that essentially, there are five key issues that play an important part in determining whether manufacturing companies will rise to the level of excellent, adequate or merely mediocre. Those five key issues are:

• Identifying and preventing supply chain risk
• Linking demand planning with the whole value chain
• Making customer and supplier collaboration real
• Addressing lifecycle opportunities and demonstrating sustainable value
• Attracting the people and skills needed for the future

In the report, PwC does a good job of breaking down the first bullet point, the task of identifying and preventing supply chain risk. Ultimately, the firm recommends that you mitigate supply chain risk by: (more…)

Even though the number of cases related to the financial crisis dropped, overall federal class action filing activity rose last year, reaching its second highest level in the last five years.

The 15th annual Securities Litigation Study, released earlier this month by PwC US, found that the total number of filings for 2010 (174) jumped by 12 percent from 2009 (155) –an increase PwC says is driven in part by the signing of the Dodd-Frank Act last July.

“The anticipated effects of Dodd-Frank, and particularly the whistleblower program, could lead to a reinvigorated volume of reported securities violations and associated class actions,” Grace Lamont, partner and US securities litigation and investigations practice leader for PwC, said.  “Other exogenous factors, such as the possibility of WikiLeaks targeting specific industries and the advances in global communication and networking access, may have far larger implications.”

The most commonly sued industry remains the financial industry. The health industry came in second, followed by the technology industry. Not surprisingly, the utilities industry, specifically oil and gas, experienced the highest percentage increase of filings for any one industry during 2010 due to an increased number of cases related to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and the Gulf oil spill.

PwC’s 2010 study also found: (more…)

Less than one in five companies see biodiversity as an important business issue, and only two out of the world’s largest 100 companies manage it as a strategic risk.

Yet, a new analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers concludes that no sector or business in the economy will escape unaffected by changes to the availability of environmental resources for business and consumers.

The research, which was conducted as part of a landmark study by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), puts the economic impact of biodiversity loss at between $2-4.5 trillion annually and says this impact will be felt in product pricing, availability of products and financing, and supply chain disruptions for consumers, business and government. For example, the study lists water used in food and drink production, timber for packaging, furniture and paper, productive land for fruit and vegetables, and fibers for clothes, as just some of the biodiversity and ecosystem ‘services’ whose economic value and protection are currently at risk. (more…)

Aligning risk to performance and integrating risk at a business unit level are part of eight strategic imperatives that will play determining factors in their short- and long-term success following the economic crisis, according to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC).

The report, titled 10Minutes on Competitive Advantage, includes information and insights from PwC’s Global CEO Survey and its US-focused report, as well as interviews with thousands of PwC clients.

Recommendations include: (more…)

PricewaterhouseCoopers recently published its 13th Annual Global CEO Survey, and the results show that business leaders are emerging from the recession with a healthy respect for risk, volatility and flexibility.

Not surprisingly, many of the 1,198 CEOs surveyed cited business concerns that relate to supply chain management. For instance, even though business leaders in the survey cited a protracted global recession as their biggest worry, they also voiced significant unease regarding government overregulation. In fact, more CEOs are ‘extremely concerned’ about over-regulation than any other threat to growth, and worries over protectionist tendencies are up ten percentage points over last year’s survey.

PwC also found that: (more…)