Customer Reviews

The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage

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4 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

In this book, MIT Professor Sheffi analyzes high-impact business disruptions, their causes and consequences. Using real life examples, he illustrates how even a small disruption in one part of a tight supply chain can result in major problems elsewhere. He discusses several risk assessment methodologies for estimating probabilities and severity of various types of losses (natural, accidental, and intentional). A brief introduction to current supply chain theory and practice follows.

The heart of this book is about specific strategies that a number of enterprises are using to reduce their vulnerability to disruptions and to build flexibility into the supply chain. Topics include early warning systems, collaboration, redundancy, product redesign, customer relations management and cultural change. Professor Sheffi illustrates how various companies have innovated and implemented these strategies. He argues that supply chain integrity and security should be as integral to enterprise management as is quality or safety.

Supply chain management innovations such as outsourcing, just-in-time delivery and supply base consolidation require corporate risk managers to develop new loss control strategies and competencies. Business competition is now based on the capabilities of the entire supply chain, not just an individual company. Risk managers must carefully look up and down the entire length of the supply chain to identify vulnerabilities and to make sure that appropriate risk controls and/or risk transfer and financing methods (e.g., contingent business interruption insurance) are in place.

The resilient enterprise recognizes that its supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and prepares accordingly. In today's complex business environment, disruptions somewhere along the supply chain are all but inevitable. Preparation and flexibility not only improve the odds of an enterprise's survival, but may also become a decisive competitive advantage when disruptions adversely affect rival enterprises.

As a 30+ year practitioner of corporate risk management and insurance, I recommend Yossi Sheffi's The Resilient Enterprise to all risk managers striving to integrate sound risk management theory and practice into their organization's standard operating procedures.

Yossi Sheffi has compiled a masterful accounting of the challenges businesses face every day. His depictions of events are real-life, his advice on preventing and recovering from major disruptions is sound and he presents this all in an extremely readable fashion. This book is a must read for everyone in business, especially those who do not understand the value added proposition that corporate security teams add to the bottom line.

This book explains how different companies (some competitors) dealt with major disruptions in the last 2 decades, why some benefit while others are doomed. This book will not give you clear guidelines on how to become resilient/flexible, but how other companies did it and turned disruptions to their advantage.
A MUST READ!!!

The Resilient Enterprise is the best business book I have read in the last ten years. It should be on the required reading list for Business Continuity Professionals and it should be mandatory reading for CEO's.

I have shipped copies to many of my associates.

A fire burns down the manufacturing plant of your key supplier, who makes parts you absolutely must have. A contractor miles away accidentally cuts a communication cable, taking your entire information system offline. A labor strike shuts down ports, and your products sit offshore for weeks. All of these scenarios have damaged companies in the past. However, today, in the post-9/11 era, terrorism has elevated your risk to entirely new levels. Is your organization ready to cope? Yossi Sheffi, an international expert in supply chain management, shows you how to determine your company's level of vulnerability, and what to do to become resilient in the face of setbacks. We recommend this book to executives who want to prepare for disaster.

I'm a brazilian doctorean student in Supply Chain Management, and this book is being very important for my studies. It is about the risk end vulnerability that one enterprise can occours, and show examples and tools to use when a disruption occours. Very good.

Companies' fortunes in the face of business shocks (eg. U.S. Pacific ports shutting down during the Christmas rush, Taiwan's earthquake that rendered many suppliers incapable of meeting commitments) depend more on choices made before the disruption than actions taken amidst it. The preceding is the key point in Sheffi's "The Resilient Enterprise."

Sheffi then goes on to expound on how this accomplished, after first assessing the firm's vulnerabilities - flexibility via design, reducing the number of parts, reducing the number of products, fast reaction times, balancing the strengths and weaknesses of single-sourcing, creating distribution centers (eg. Cadillac in Florida), creating instant "history" via "test batches" at test locations (eg. Nine West) to quickly assess customer reaction to new styles, data-sharing (eg. Wal-Mart and its suppliers), risk sharing (eg. publisher buy-backs vs. bookstores), and revenue-sharing that encourages more product availability and faster breakeven (eg. Blockbuster).

Other mechanisms include casinos' pooling data on card-counters and cheaters, whiskey manufacturers sharing theft data (finding an impressive commonality of problem locations), building in redundant capacity (eg. FedEx's flying two empty planes each night to Memphis from each coast, and ready to swoop down and handle any unexpected problems; setting up for about 40 half-empty planes/night --> quickly available capacity that could also make an extra stop or two, and 14 spares ready on the ground), standardized equipment (UPS, Southwest Airlines), and mass customerization (focusing on performing all the common elements "en masse," rather than each as 100% separate production from start to finish.

Finally, Sheffi also points out, using examples, that denying problems only makes them worse (Lexus vs. Audi recall experiences, J&J's Tylenol vs. Intel's defective chip), and that staff hiring is key (eg. UPS hires from its part-time ranks, providing it, in effect, with a very long interview process).

In some instances I wish Sheffi had provided more detail - eg. the Toyota Production System. But then again, that is a full book in itself, and then I would be concerned that the book was too long. Sheffi hits it just about "just right!"

Cristal text to explain the main drivers of Supply Chain Risks and how to create resilience to mitigate them. Also provide an overview of which business processes and variables need to be considered and aligned in a Supply Chain to reduce risks of disruptions.

To me, this book by Yossi Sheffi was an eye-opener, not so much for it's academic value, but for it's "entertainment" value, "entertainment" as in "stop-you-in-your-tracks-and-make-you-think"-value. Excellently written, the book does not necessarily provide concrete solutions for your own business, but it showcases how other companies, successfully or not, handled various crisis situations. Sheffi's analysis of how and why things go wrong or right is spot on and to the point. This is a good story-book, but it's a story-book with a message. Keep it on your desk at all times, or even better, keep a second copy on your nightstand...enjoy!

I lead a relatively large business continuity practice and have recommended this book to my team and clients. It's not that there is so much new information for me, but it is packaged very well and the war stories alone are worth the price of admission.

If you are looking for a book covering the IT aspects of resilience this is not for you, but if you want some exposure to improving the resilience of the operational side of your organization I believe you will find this book extremely helpful.