Worst Supply Chain Disasters

I recently came across this article written by Dan Gilmore Editor-in-Chief of Supply Chain Digest, I thought it was well worth a mention as it brought many monumental mishaps to my attention, many I have never knew exsited. This brief excerpt listing some of the major disasters Dan discussed from his article;

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Foxmeyer’s 1996 Distribution Disaster: New order management and warehouse automation systems lead to inability to ship product and failure to achieve expected savings; bankruptcy and sale of the company follow GM’s Robot Mania: CEO Robert Smith spends $40 billion in the 1980s on robots that mostly don’t work, while Toyota focuses on “lean” and cleans up.

The WebVan Story: $25 million automated warehouses just make no sense given the market; company goes from billions in market gap to gone in just months in 2001

adidas 1996 Warehouse Meltdown: Not well known story, adidas can’t get a first and then second warehouse system and also its DC automation to work. Inability to ship leads to market share losses that persist for a long time.

Denver Airport Baggage Handling System: New airport opens late in 1995 due to failure of highly automated, hugely expensive system, which never really works and is completely shuttered

Toys R Us.com Christmas 1999: On-line retail division can’t make Christmas delivery commitments to thousands; infamous “We’re sorry” emails on Dec. 23; eventually, Amazon takes over fulfillment

Hershey’s Halloween Nightmare 1999: New order management and shipping systems don’t start right, as Hershey can’t fulfill critical Halloween orders; $150 million in revenue lost as stock drops 30%

Gilmore. D, First Thoughts 26 January 2006, Worst Supply Chain Disasters [online] scdigest.com, Available from: SOURCE [Accessed 3 November 2009]

Busiest shipping ports Trend Analysis

First glance at the graph, its not hard to see China has well and truly firmly established itself as the worlds most important container shipping market. The Shanghai gradient stands out significantly with a substantial growth of 11,590,000 TEU's over a four year period.

It appears the once rapid growth of containers in Taiwan during the early 90s has slowed down to a steady average of approximately 9,800,000 TEU's over the four year course. With the exception of a small drop in numbers for Taiwan during the 2004 - 2005 period, one thing is very clear, all other Ports have increased there numbers of TEU's processed annually.

Dubai and Hamburg are portraying a steady growth trend, whilst Rotterdam and South Korea are managing to creep that little bit higher each year. -Matt