Like Barry and Jay, I’m a great lover of hooks! A hook can be a little story, a movie clip, or a simple exercise. The key is that they’re short and memorable! Here’s a nice one concerning global supply chain risk that I use in my supply management lecture.
I take in a nice bunch of flowers and ask my students where they come from. In the case of Europe, the most likely origin is Kenya. Horticulture is Kenya’s biggest source of income with 1000 metric tons of produce shipped daily to Europe. (See the photo In Ch.11 of the Heizer/Render text). In fact, around 30% of all cut flowers sold in the EU are imported from Kenya.
I then discuss all the effort required to get these lovely flowers into our stores every day. Here you can mention the challenges of speed as a key performance objective, the perishability of stock, the extension of the supply chain etc. Then I ask (jokingly, of course!) why Kenya dislikes Iceland right now?! For the period earlier this year when the Icelandic volcano was grounding most flights throughout Europe, Kenya’s flower supply chain was shut down at a cost of approximately $3million per day. Flowers and other fresh produce had to be thrown away because there was no way of getting them to the market other than airfreight.
This story can be used demonstrate the nature of global supply networks and the risks they face from disruptions that are often well beyond their control. You can then get students to think of other factors that can cause disruptions to supply networks: Natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina or Pakistan floods for example); Geo-political challenges; trade disputes; etc.
This hook is of course particularly handy if you’re in Europe, because Kenya was so badly affected by the Icelandic volcano in a way that many flower suppliers in the USA weren’t. So, you could simply tell the story as if you were in Europe for that lecture… “So kids, imagine I’ve gone over to England to visit my Grandma and I’m taking her this bunch of flowers. Where do you think they came from?…” You get the idea! Happy teaching!
Prof. Alistair Brandon-Jones writes this guest post from the University of Bath, one of the top five business schools in the UK. Alistair has been active in developing myomlab.
Alistair’s post is a great story. And it certainly has a parallel in the US. As we discuss in Ch.11, 70% of the roses in this country come from Columbia and Ecuador. The 9-11 disruption was a similar supply chain disaster for the growers in S. America.
As an additional note, the WSJ just published an article (Feb.7,2011) called “Weathering the Storm: How Companies Can Protect Themselves in an Uncertain World”. This piece also deals with global supply chain risks like the one in Alistair’s blog.