Logistics

DAY 2 OF THE RISK & RESILIENCE ONLINE EVENT

AFTER THE CRISIS: IMPLICATIONS FOR RISK & RESILIENCE IN logistics

Does the corona crisis prove that we have overshoot the mark in the pursuit of optimization?

Between the government’s coronavirus control measures and the public’s reaction to those measures, the Transport & Logistics sector is seeing rapid change.

Passenger transport and some aspects of goods haulage are dealing with a drop in business from customers and carriers, while other goods transporters and logistical service providers, such as those active in fulfilment (processing orders of online stores), are actually experiencing growth and even exceeding their capacity.

The logistics sector responded to the last economic crisis by expanding and becoming increasingly specialised. Thanks to e-commerce, chains are getting shorter as shops require fewer deliveries. In order to remain active in such a competitive market, it is crucial to optimise transport and logistics flows, but although this can improve margins in the short term, its associated increase in transparency erodes prices. The spread of digitisation has accelerated these developments, and the disruption it causes has even drastically changed the direction those developments are taking.

The issue at hand is now whether heavy reliance on automation, expansion and hyper-specialisation has made the industry vulnerable to severe crises such as the current Covid-19 pandemic. Would we have been better prepared or protected if we had had a professional risk management strategy in place?

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Speaker
Mohammad Rajabali Nejad

The current Covid-19 crisis impacted first humans, then our technical infrastructures and the environment. It showed that humans, technological systems and the environment are closely interconnected. Any sustainable or resilient solution must take all these aspects into account, and the Safety Cube Theory offers a guide to how to do that.

Arjan Denekamp

Arjan Denekamp is Director Risk at the Dutch Railways since 2016. His field of work covers risks across all domains, namely safety, compliance, operations, finance, reputation and sustainability. He is also responsible for business continuity management within NS and was chairman of the NS management team during the corona crisis. Before 2016 Arjan has worked at various banks, both in risk management and business.

Marcel Wouterse

Involved in various C-Level positions in Aviation and Logistics. Driven by a strong passion to build organizations of the future. Motivated by the unlimited belief in people and a shapeable society. The goal is to make people better, stronger and happier.

  • Director, Trainer, Consultant, Lecturer, Researcher
  • Build Organizations
  • Economist and Collector of Knowledge
Prof.dr. Henk Zijm

Willem Hendrik Maria (Henk) Zijm is emeritus Professor of Production and Supply Chain Management and a former Rector Magnificus (2005–2008) of the University of Twente.  He was also scientific director of the Dutch Institute for Advanced Logistics (DINALOG) in Breda and held various international positions, among others as President of the International Society of Inventory Research. He has been a consultant to a large number of companies both in the Netherlands and abroad. He has published more than 150 articles in international refereed scientific journals and is the (co-)author of 4 books. He supervised more than 200 master and 32 PhD students and has served as associate editor of various journals in his field.

The theme of the second day of the Risk & Resilience Online event is:

After the crisis? Implications for managing risk and resilience in Dutch sectors – in our case, Logistics and Transport.

We use real-life examples presented by entrepreneurs, in combination with theories explained by scientists, to offer you greater insight into the context of this afternoon’s central question: Does the coronavirus crisis show that our pursuit of optimisation has gone too far?

For the talk and the follow-up discussion, we take an approach based on the relationship between people, systems (whether technical or not) and environmental factors.

All the speakers and participants will be invited to engage in an interactive discussion to tease out some possible answers.

  • Mohammad Rajabali Nejad - Mohammad Rajabali Nejad - Assistant Professor System Design and Systems Engineering

    The current Covid-19 crisis impacted first humans, then our technical infrastructures and the environment. It showed that humans, technological systems and the environment are closely interconnected. Any sustainable or resilient solution must take all these aspects into account, and the Safety Cube Theory offers a guide to how to do that.

    Bio:
    Dr Mohammad Rajabali Nejad has an interest in both personal and social aspects of safety and resilience. He is a multidisciplinary engineer with experience in various fields of Civil, Industrial, Mechanical and Design Engineering. He has studied at several different universities around the globe. He teaches multiple courses on safety, design and engineering at the various levels of Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes and postgraduate study. His research covers a broad spectrum of both technical and non-technical aspects of engineering, safety and integration, and he has led diverse academic and industrial projects.

  • Maria Iacob - Full Professor Enterprise Systems Engineering, University of Twente

    If we are to learn anything from what happened in the last period, then that is how incredibly dependent we are on information systems to maintain some level of normality in our lives, and in the way we work and do business. We should understand well that the post-COVID19 “normal” will assume a complete shift in the current management paradigm, namely moving away from the obsession for just-in-time and just-enough efficiency-driven management to a management style in which attention is paid to both efficiency and enterprise/organisational resilience and the rapid conversion of resources (and possibly of the business model) in case of catastrophic disruptions. We see now that both the sectors that a sudden increase in demand (e.g., healthcare logistics, cargo transport, retail) and sectors that are practically seized their activities (horeca, tourism, person/public transport) have huge problems in dealing the current turn of events. Therefore, role of IT and the relationship between resilience improvement and enterprise architecture change will probably gain more attention in research. It is in my opinion critical to develop new model-based methods and quantitative analysis techniques that would allow the continuous monitoring and management of enterprise resilience and will make explicit the impact resilience has on organizations and on the way they operate.

    BIO

    Maria-Eugenia Iacob is currently full professor of Enterprise Systems Engineering  at the University of Twente. Her primary research focus is on the area of (enterprise) information systems architecture design and analysis. Her research interests include: methods for modelling and (quantitative) analysis of enterprise architectures, service-oriented architectures design, model-driven development, data and process interoperability of distributed enterprise applications, inter-organizational integration, business intelligence, intelligence amplification, and applications of the above in smart logistics, circular construction industry, and rural smartness. She has published over 100 journal and conferences papers. She is co-author of the international standard “ArchiMate” (promoted by The Open Group) for enterprise architecture modeling. Most of her research took place in research projects co-financed by The Dutch Research Council (NWO), and industry: The Synchromodal Control Tower, BATMAN, Synchromodal-IT (main applicant), Catelog, Synchromodal Cool Port Control, Synchromodality Port of Twente (SPoT), Autonomous Logistics Miners 4 SMBs (main applicant), DATAREL, etc.

  • Gea Kolk - Risk, Safety, RAMS and Line Manager at Movares

    Sector: design, construction, renovation and maintenance of infrastructure, including public transport infrastructure.

    For the risk manager, the current crisis has its advantages: never before has the profession received so much attention. Press conferences are even being broadcast in which the Prime Minister explains risk management in practice – complete with probabilities, effects and cost-benefit considerations!

    But the challenge for society is a big one: how resilient can you be, and is it enough?

    In the short term, the infrastructure sector has shown a great deal of resilience: the principal actors, such as the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management and ProRail, have promised to implement the scheduled assignments. This is important for the livelihood and employment of all the companies involved. Lower traveller numbers also mean that the inconvenience caused by the sector’s work is minimal, a situation which is being exploited by bringing work forward. This is an example of opportunity management and creativity.

    In the longer term, the effect on public transport will be drastic. The message is continuously being spread to "avoid busy places", but public transport in its current form is by definition "a lot of people together". People who invest in a private means of transport now won't just leave it at home when life gets back to "normal". All previous efforts to get people out of their cars have been wiped out in one fell swoop. So why invest in public transport and its infrastructure? We are taking the opposite approach: extra money, extra creativity, full steam ahead. We still believe in the importance of the environment, the climate and mobility for everyone!

    Bio:
    Identifying risks, managing them and understanding how people deal with uncertainty: in my study of mathematics, this main subject was applied to farming. As a risk, safety, RAMS and line manager at Movares, I take this approach and apply it to systems for tracks, bridges and locks. From farmer to engineer, from wheat and rice to switches and barriers, from measures to resilience: risk management helps us achieve our goal.

  • Richard Slenders - Risk Manager Asset Management, Royal Schiphol Group

    From flight to fight

    The current crisis as a result of the Covid-19 virus has drastic impact on the transport and logistics sector. Other than: e-commerce, take away food delivery and its related (package) delivery businesses, the outlook of business is decline in demand for multiple years.

    The aviation industry is used to growth since 1945 and is now facing a decline in passenger demand up to 80% in 2020 and further depending on the length of the Covid-19 virus and the recovery of the economies and travel behaviour and cargo.

    Although the many risks registered and controlled, a pandemic (in Europe) was not rated with such a chance and impact possible as we see in 2020. Having the bandwidth of multiple scenarios related to a risk increases the impact and result analysis of the scenario greatly but is however not always available. The transport and logistic industry has to become more resilient in the specialisation on the services provided to a wider portfolio or partnerships with (non) related businesses. After the fight of building back better with a more sustainable and resilient recovery we can go beyond flight, connecting your world.

    Bio:
    Richard Slenders is a Risk Manager at Asset Management within The Royal Schiphol Group who makes systems and assets available to Operations so they can execute.
    After extensive experience in Infrastructure Projects, Contract Management and Asset Management, the contract- and market development with risk-based working presents a nice challenge.

  • Klaas Bolhuis - Owner EQ Risk Management

    Impact of the current crisis on the transport sector:
    The crisis is affecting several aspects of my field:

    1.  Strong decrease or even growth in turnover.
    2.  Disruption in the supply of goods.
    3.  Uncertainties in liability regimes as a service provider and employer.
    4.  Delay in developments around Brexit.
    5.  New opportunities in service provision due to behavioural changes among producers and customers

  • Arjan Denekamp - Director Risk at Nederlandse Spoorwegen

    Arjan Denekamp is Director Risk at Nederlandse Spoorwegen since 2016. His field of work covers risks across all domains, namely safety, compliance, operations, finance, reputation and sustainability. He is also responsible for business continuity management within NS and was chairman of the NS management team during the corona crisis. Before 2016 Arjan has worked at various banks, both in risk management and business.

  • Marcel Wouterse - Program Manager and Lecturer Breda University of Applied Sciences

    Involved in various C-Level positions in Aviation and Logistics. Driven by a strong passion to build organizations of the future. Motivated by the unlimited belief in people and a shapeable society. The goal is to make people better, stronger and happier.

    • Director, Trainer, Consultant, Lecturer, Researcher
    • Build Organizations
    • Economist and Collector of Knowledge
  • Henk Zijm - Professor of Production and Supply Chain Management, University of Twente

    Willem Hendrik Maria (Henk) Zijm is emeritus Professor of Production and Supply Chain Management and a former Rector Magnificus (2005–2008) of the University of Twente. He was also scientific director of the Dutch Institute for Advanced Logistics (DINALOG) in Breda and held various international positions, among others as President of the International Society of Inventory Research. He has been a consultant to a large number of companies both in the Netherlands and abroad. He has published more than 150 articles in international refereed scientific journals and is the (co-)author of 4 books. He supervised more than 200 master and 32 PhD students and has served as associate editor of various journals in his field.