Businesses pointed to a range of factors driving that assessment, including: a lack of data, difficulty evaluating every organization in a supplier network, and the responsibility for supply chain visibility being spread across departments.
Despite the rising threat, 69% of businesses say they do not have the necessary visibility over their supply chains to uncover risk in their organizational networks to avoid reputational harm. And at the same time, 74% rated their third-party risk management sophistication as either poor or mediocre. So 70% of businesses are growing their investment in third-party risk management, Moody’s said in the report, “The rising tide of third-party risk management -- Surfacing risks to safeguard reputations.”
“The past couple of years have brought supply chain risk to the fore. Organizations that can account for the environmental impact of their suppliers and demonstrate that they work with fair and ethical organizations can better protect their reputations and are more appealing to consumers. It’s clear that visibility of supply chain risks can provide huge competitive advantages,” Keith Berry, general manager, Know Your Customer Solutions at Moody’s Analytics, said in a release.
The report identified four advantages of improved third-party risk management: avoidance of reputational damage, improved operational resilience, avoidance of fines, and faster time to supply chain recovery following disruption.
And identifying risks associated with suppliers buried in the supply chain is particularly crucial to consumer-facing businesses and regulated organizations which are particularly sensitive to reputational risk, Moody’s said. Those pressures have recently risen even higher due to new regulation such as the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act and the EU’s upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, the report said.
“This traffic data suggests a relatively small number of bridges see a disproportionate amount of the largest ship traffic. It’s very clear where the heavy traffic is happening and these bridges should be prioritized for more careful and rigorous risk analysis,” Shields said.
To create the study, researchers used data mining techniques to identify the nation’s bridges that are the most vulnerable to a similar strike. First, they collected six years of U.S. Coast Guard data—logs detailing the precise location, heading, speed, and status of every ship traveling through the country’s waters on a minute-by-minute basis. Then they cross-referenced the geolocated shipping information with port data and bridge data from the National Bridge Inventory to determine which large ships passed under bridges. Finally, they built a program to analyze that data set to assess large-ship traffic under more than 200 major U.S. bridges.
The results show that three bridges had—by far—the most traffic from the very largest ships: The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City, the Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Georgia, and two San Francisco Bay Area bridges. In addition, bridges with the most traffic from large (but not necessarily the very largest) ships include Houston’s Fred Hartman Bridge and several bridges along the Mississippi River including the Crescent City Connection in New Orleans. Meanwhile, the Francis Scott Key Bridge ranked among the top 10 bridges in very large ship traffic, with on average one ship longer than 300 meters (the size of the Dali) passing under it per day.
Shields cautioned that high ship traffic alone doesn’t necessarily mean a bridge is at high risk for collisions. Other variables that play a role include local shipping channel conditions, along with existing shipping safety practices, and individual bridge protections.
A coalition of freight transport and cargo handling organizations is calling on countries to honor their existing resolutions to report the results of national container inspection programs, and for the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to publish those results.
Those two steps would help improve safety in the carriage of goods by sea, according to the Cargo Integrity Group (CIG), which is a is a partnership of industry associations seeking to raise awareness and greater uptake of the IMO/ILO/UNECE Code of Practice for Packing of Cargo Transport Units (2014) – often referred to as CTU Code.
According to the Cargo Integrity Group, member governments of the IMO adopted resolutions more than 20 years ago agreeing to conduct routine inspections of freight containers and the cargoes packed in them. But less than 5% of 167 national administrations covered by the agreement are regularly submitting the results of their inspections to IMO in publicly available form.
The low numbers of reports means that insufficient data is available for IMO or industry to draw reliable conclusions, fundamentally undermining their efforts to improve the safety and sustainability of shipments by sea, CIG said.
Meanwhile, the dangers posed by poorly packed, mis-handled, or mis-declared containerized shipments has been demonstrated again recently in a series of fires and explosions aboard container ships. Whilst the precise circumstances of those incidents remain under investigation, the Cargo Integrity Group says it is concerned that measures already in place to help identify possible weaknesses are not being fully implemented and that opportunities for improving compliance standards are being missed.
By the numbers, overall retail sales in August were up 0.1% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 2.1% unadjusted year over year. That compared with increases of 1.1% month over month and 2.9% year over year in July.
August’s core retail sales as defined by NRF — based on the Census data but excluding automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants — were up 0.3% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 3.3% unadjusted year over year. Core retail sales were up 3.4% year over year for the first eight months of the year, in line with NRF’s forecast for 2024 retail sales to grow between 2.5% and 3.5% over 2023.
“These numbers show the continued resiliency of the American consumer,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said in a release. “While sales growth decelerated from last month’s pace, there is little hint of consumer spending unraveling. Households have the underpinnings to spend as recent wage gains have outpaced inflation even though payroll growth saw a slowdown in July and August. Easing inflation is providing added spending capacity to cost-weary shoppers and the interest rate cuts expected to come from the Fed should help create a more positive environment for consumers in the future.”
The U.S., U.K., and Australia will strengthen supply chain resiliency by sharing data and taking joint actions under the terms of a pact signed last week, the three nations said.
The agreement creates a “Supply Chain Resilience Cooperation Group” designed to build resilience in priority supply chains and to enhance the members’ mutual ability to identify and address risks, threats, and disruptions, according to the U.K.’s Department for Business and Trade.
One of the top priorities for the new group is developing an early warning pilot focused on the telecommunications supply chain, which is essential for the three countries’ global, digitized economies, they said. By identifying and monitoring disruption risks to the telecommunications supply chain, this pilot will enhance all three countries’ knowledge of relevant vulnerabilities, criticality, and residual risks. It will also develop procedures for sharing this information and responding cooperatively to disruptions.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the group chose that sector because telecommunications infrastructure is vital to the distribution of public safety information, emergency services, and the day to day lives of many citizens. For example, undersea fiberoptic cables carry over 95% of transoceanic data traffic without which smartphones, financial networks, and communications systems would cease to function reliably.
“The resilience of our critical supply chains is a homeland security and economic security imperative,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a release. “Collaboration with international partners allows us to anticipate and mitigate disruptions before they occur. Our new U.S.-U.K.-Australia Supply Chain Resilience Cooperation Group will help ensure that our communities continue to have the essential goods and services they need, when they need them.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help users build “smart and responsive supply chains” by increasing workforce productivity, expanding visibility, accelerating processes, and prioritizing the next best action to drive results, according to business software vendor Oracle.
To help reach that goal, the Texas company last week released software upgrades including user experience (UX) enhancements to its Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM) suite.
“Organizations are under pressure to create efficient and resilient supply chains that can quickly adapt to economic conditions, control costs, and protect margins,” Chris Leone, executive vice president, Applications Development, Oracle, said in a release. “The latest enhancements to Oracle Cloud SCM help customers create a smarter, more responsive supply chain by enabling them to optimize planning and execution and improve the speed and accuracy of processes.”
According to Oracle, specific upgrades feature changes to its:
Production Supervisor Workbench, which helps organizations improve manufacturing performance by providing real-time insight into work orders and generative AI-powered shift reporting.
Maintenance Supervisor Workbench, which helps organizations increase productivity and reduce asset downtime by resolving maintenance issues faster.
Order Management Enhancements, which help organizations increase operational performance by enabling users to quickly create and find orders, take actions, and engage customers.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Enhancements, which help organizations accelerate product development and go-to-market by enabling users to quickly find items and configure critical objects and navigation paths to meet business-critical priorities.