White Papers

Written by ALOM CEO Hannah Kain and supply chain expert Dr. Ben Hazen, this paper provides practical advice for building resilient supply chains amid increasing geopolitical tensions, regulatory challenges, and emerging economic alliances.

Shipping errors can be expensive. They impact customer satisfaction, customer retention, and profit. Ultimately, “simple” shipping errors can impact the entire organization and cause customer relationship and even cash flow problems. This white paper illustrates scenarios to show how “simple” shipping errors can become costly along with common consequences of shipping errors.

Supply chains today have become more complex, dynamic, and geographically diverse than ever before. This makes them vulnerable to a variety of risks, such as geopolitical risk, economic risk, fluctuating demand, compliance risks, reputational risk, and the risk of natural or man-made disasters. Coauthored by Phil Jamison and Hannah Kain.

Traditional supply chain management practices leave vast gaps in resiliency because supply chain risk management is fundamentally different from everyday operations management. When companies fail to recognize and appreciate these differences, they fail to manage risk effectively. Co-authored by Bindiya Vakil and Hannah Kain.

Considering phenomena like Brexit and the United States/China trade dispute, there is an underlying tension surrounding the global trade environment. Indeed, the foreseeable future is shaping up to be defined by higher levels of global supply chain uncertainty. Coauthored by Ben Hazen and Hannah Kain.

When researching a fulfillment and supply chain vendor, many companies put themselves at risk by focusing only on the easy-to-compare unit prices, such as a per-order shipping fee. Serious quality problems can arise if the wrong vendor is chosen. This can impact the entire organization and threaten a company’s survival. Even small quality errors can impact a company’s bottom line. This paper looks at how to review costs while analyzing the risks involved with basing a business decision on unit costs alone.

This paper covers how to manage risk when quality control procedures fail and there is no recall contingency plan. Long-term brand impact, operational response, communication strategies, and the cost associated with various recall options are detailed.