Serving markets and customers during supply chain disruptions is essential to business success. Our research extends the vast body of work done on resilience at MIT CTL. We focus on identifying how to make the case for investing in resilience and risk management in business.

MIT CTL Investing in Resilience

See our recent article in Harvard Business Review, November 1, 2022

"Overcoming the Financial Barriers to Building Resilient Supply Chains" by Jim Rice, Walid Klibi, and Kai Trepte, Harvard Business Review, November 1, 2022

 

Other Relevant Recent Supply Chain Resilience Publications

"Overcoming the Financial Barriers to Building Resilient Supply Chains" by Jim Rice, Walid Klibi, and Kai Trepte, Harvard Business Review, November 1, 2022

"Building Supply Chain Resilience Is Much More Than Fixing Supply Problems" by Jim Rice and Ken Cottrill, MIT CTL Supply Chain, August 11, 2022 

"Supply Chain Resilience Core Capacities Part 2: Lessons from Comparing Disruptions" by Jim Rice, Supply Chain Management Review, August 18, 2021

"The Seven Core Capacities of Supply Chain Resilience" by Jim Rice, Supply Chain Management Review, August 5, 2021

"A Financial Crisis is Looming for Smaller Suppliers" by Federico Caniato, Antonella Moretto, and Jim Rice, Harvard Business Review, August 6, 2020

"Préparer sa supply chain pour l’ère post-coronavirus" by Walid Klibi and Jim Rice, Harvard Business Review - France, July 6, 2020

"S&OP: A new frontier for supply chain resilience?" by Kai Trepte, Walid Klibi and Jim Rice, Supply Chain Quarterly, May 14, 2020

"Prepare your Supply Chain for Coronavirus" by Jim Rice, Harvard Business Review, February 27, 2020

"A Financial Crisis is Looming for Smaller Suppliers" by Federico Caniato, Antonella Moretto, and Jim Rice, Harvard Business Review, August 6, 2020

 

A Briefing on the Resilience Research (this links to the video of the event)

Prof. Walid Klibi, Kai Trepte, and Jim Rice shared some of their recent work with industry, developing methods to assess risk and invest in resilience. There is a large gap between risk management and actual investment in resilience, and Walid, Kai, and Jim will share how they are closing that gap to help industry make data-based investments in resilience.  From the June 4, 2021 Supply Chain Exchange First Friday Research Briefing.  

 

Challenges

As high profile stories in the news show, supply chain disruptions can have a big impact on the entire franchise. After a disruption, organizations agree that investments in resilience to protect the franchise and maintain continuous service to customers are justified. Unfortunately, as institutional memory fades, investments in supply chain resilience become more difficult to make.

Investing in resilience

Our discussions with best-in-class companies indicate they have developed processes to set aside funds on an annual basis and evaluate supply chain resilience investments to fund. While these processes are effective, they may require more resources than many companies can justify. By testing our approach with practitioners we hope to show that it is possible to leverage existing processes within organizations and systematically evaluate the value of making investments in supply chain resilience.

How to get involved

Companies can participate by volunteering to support ongoing research initiatives within the project or by suggesting and funding new studies in this area.  Please contact Jim Rice at jrice@mit.edu.

Research Team

Jim Rice

Jim Rice, <jrice@mit.edu>, Deputy Director, MIT CTL
 

Kai Trepte

Kai Trepte, <trepte@mit.edu>, Research Associate

Walid Klibi

Prof. Walid Klibi, <walid.klibi@kedgebs.com>, MIT CTL Research Affiliate, Kedge Business School

For more information

Contact Jim Rice, Deputy Director, MIT CTL
jrice@mit.edu
617.258.8584