In new book, MIT professor explains how companies can lessen the shocks of a volatile world. Companies large and small globalize their enterprises in search of advantages, such as lower costs, flexibility, and closer proximity to key markets. But globalizing comes with an Achilles’ heel: The vaster a company’s operations, the more vulnerable it becomes to jarring events around the world, including natural disasters, political upheaval, industrial actions, mistreatment of workers in suppliers’ factories, and damaging effects of climate change.
“For a variety of reasons, these disruptions are getting more potent,” says Yossi Sheffi, the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT, and director of MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics.