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The Resilient Enterprise
Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage
Yossi Sheffi
 Table of Contents and Sample Chapters
What happens when fire strikes the manufacturing plant of the sole supplier for the brake pressure valve used in every Toyota? When a hurricane shuts down production at a Unilever plant? When Dell and Apple chip manufacturers in Taiwan take weeks to recover from an earthquake? When the U.S. Pacific ports are shut down during the Christmas rush? When terrorists strike? In The Resilient Enterprise, Yossi Sheffi shows that companies' fortunes in the face of such business shocks depend more on choices made before the disruption than they do on actions taken in the midst of it—and that resilience benefits firms every day, disaster or no disaster. He shows how companies can build in flexibility throughout their supply chains, based on proven design principles and the right culture—balancing security, redundancy, and short-term profits. And he shows how investments in resilience and flexibility not only reduce risk but create a competitive advantage in the increasingly volatile marketplace.
Sheffi describes the way companies can increase security—reducing the likelihood of a disruption—with layered defenses, the tracking and analysis of “near-misses,” fast detection, and close collaboration with government agencies, trading partners, and even competitors. But the focus of the book is on resilience—the ability to bounce back from disruptions and disasters—by building in redundancy and flexibility. For example, standardization, modular design, and collaborative relationships with suppliers (and other stakeholders) can help create a robust supply chain. And a corporate culture of flexibility—with distributed decision making and communications at all levels—can create a resilient enterprise.
Sheffi provides tools for companies to reduce the vulnerability of the supply chain they live in. And along the way he tells the stories of dozens of enterprises, large and small, including Toyota, Nokia, General Motors, Zara, Land Rover, Chiquita, Aisin Seiki, Southwest Airlines, UPS, Johnson and Johnson, Intel, Amazon.com, the U.S. Navy, and others, from across the globe. Their successes, failures, preparations, and methods provide a rich set of lessons in preparing for and managing disruptions.
Additional material available at www.TheResilientEnterprise.com
About the Author
Yossi Sheffi, an international expert in supply chain management, is Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT and Director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. He has worked with leading manufacturers around the world on logistics issues and is an active entrepreneur, having founded or cofounded five companies since 1987.
| "This may be the most important business book that you will buy this year. . . . Sheffi, an MIT Professor of engineering who writes with refreshing clarity and first-hand business knowledge has produced a practical guide, not just another risk management manual."
—Director Magazine "However counter-intuitive this may sound, Sheffi's detailed examination of the supply chain breadsowns at companies such as Amazon, Dell, General Motors, Intel, and UPS leaves little room for doubting his key messages: disaster might not be frequent but it is inevitable. And, the measures that organizations undertake before the event will almost certainly have a greater influence on the subsequent consequences than anything they might do afterwards."
—Information Age "[Sheffi is] quickly becoming the global expert on resilient enterprises."
—John Robb’s Weblog View All Reviews |
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| "Yossi Sheffi's book makes it vividly clear that the winners on the competitive playing field will be those companies who effectively manage their supply chains, particularly in the face of adversity. This is a boardroom issue, and a must-read."
—Michael L. Eskew, Chairman & CEO, UPS
"Insightful, shrewd, and creative. This book shows how enterprises properly made resilient against both terrorism and the disruptions inherent in globalization can also have the flexibility to respond more effectively to today's fast-changing markets."
—R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence, Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton
"This book offers reassurance to the CEO who wakes to a nightmare of what Sheffi calls high-impact/low-probability disruptions. It concludes with recommendations for securing a resilient organization that can suffer the shock of potentially catastrophic destruction, learn from it, and bounce back."
—Dame Sandra Dawson, Director, Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge
View All Endorsements |
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| Gold Award Winner for Business and Economics in the 2005 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards
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