Swine Flu Outbreak Highlights Need for Supply Chain Resilience & Vulnerability Assessments

Vulnerabilities In The Supply Chain Driven by Lean Initiatives & Reliance On Few Suppliers And Lost-Cost Countries

MANASSAS, Va., April 27 /PRNewswire/ — INSIGHT, Inc., top international provider of planning solutions that power supply chain design for the world’s foremost companies, discusses how the current swine flu outbreak highlights the need for supply chain resilience. Pandemics like Swine Flu, natural disasters, or terrorist plots are constantly in the news these days. Companies must be prepared for business disruptions by having in place an overall risk management and resilience plan. They must perform rigorous analysis of their supply chain network to uncover its vulnerabilities and manage risk.

According to Adrian Gonzalez of ARC Advisory Group in today’s Logistics Viewpoints, “the impact on supply chains has already begun: Russia is banning all meat imports from Mexico and the southern United States, and China is banning meat from Mexico, California, Texas, and Kansas. Considering that Mexico is the United States’ second largest trading partner, I expect this outbreak to affect many other products and supply chains if the situation in Mexico worsens.”

“Supply chain teams need to immediately analyze their supply chain networks for the potential impact this risk may have on their company, customers, and trading partners,” said Jeff Karrenbauer, president of INSIGHT, Inc. “These issues impact corporate survival and highlight the need for assessing supply chain vulnerability as a factor in business continuity planning.”

INSIGHT offers a powerful supply chain vulnerability/hardening analysis solution that enables companies to assess the real risks to the supply chain, identify vulnerable components and then produce an optimal design that reduces corporate risk, with an associated cost for the risk mitigation. INSIGHT’s flagship product, SAILS 21(R), features a sophisticated series of analyses designed to uncover and mitigate vulnerabilities in the supply chain. The supply chain vulnerability/hardening options of SAILS 21(R) include critical location analysis, critical customer analysis, critical raw material analysis, sufficient capacity analysis, and short-term crisis response analysis.

About INSIGHT, Inc.

INSIGHT provides optimization-based supply chain design software and consulting services developed specifically to meet the dynamic business challenges of globalization, disruptions, and mergers/acquisitions prevalent in today’s business environment. Founded by supply chain and logistics experts in 1978 with the goal of using world-class technology to add intelligence to decision making, INSIGHT solves the supply chain management issues of the world’s foremost companies, including Abbott Laboratories, BASF, Clorox, ExxonMobil, Goodyear, GE, Kellogg, Nestle, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, and Unilever.

SAILS, INSIGHT’s award-winning flagship product, can accurately represent a company’s current business practices, from raw materials sourcing to capacity planning through delivery to the end customer. The X-System(R), a proprietary optimization engine, powers a family of planning and scheduling solutions, from the design of a global supply chains to crew scheduling, troop deployments, and transportation procurement. In addition, INSIGHT provides optimization components, partnering with third party software providers to deliver best-of-breed solutions. Our software and services help design optimal supply chain networks that minimize costs and free up capital, streamline operations, maximize profits, and increase customer service levels. For more information, please visit us on the Web at http://www.insight-mss.com.

    For more information, please contact:
    Becky Boyd
    MediaFirst PR - Atlanta
    becky@mediafirst.net
    (770) 642-2080 x 214

SOURCE INSIGHT, Inc.