Cloud- Based Hosting and Supply Chain Reliability

One technology that plays a crucial role in supply chain management (SCM) is cloud-based supply chain management systems. As will be described, cloud-based SCM systems can both mitigate and cause supply chain disruptions.

Cloud-based SCM systems can be either self-hosted by a company or are hosted by a cloud service provider. The primary advantage of self-hosting is data privacy: data is stored on the company’s own servers. The disadvantages are costs as well as vulnerability to physical disruptions (Temjanovski et al., 2021, pp. 28-30).

Hosting by a cloud service provider is the usual way companies host their SCM systems. While the company no longer “owns” their data, the problems of scaling and of IT and security maintenance are transferred to the cloud service provider. This is usually less expensive than self-hosting. In addition, supply chain visibility is generally available to supply chain partners (Temjanovski et al., 2021, p. 30).

The largest cloud service provider is Amazon Web Services (AWS). They provide services to most parts of the world, the major exceptions include Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Within the United States, AWS has servers located in four regions (large geographic areas) for private or commercial use plus two separate regions dedicated to government use (AWS Documentation, n.d.). Each region has anywhere from two to four availability zones (distinct locations within a region), and within those availability zones are one or more data centers. AWS documentation notes that each datacenter has “redundant power, networking, and connectivity, and housed in separate facilities” (AWS Documentation, n.d.). At each level (region, AZ, datacenter), a failure at one level is isolated from other levels. Data is mirrored between the different AZs in a region, ensuring redundancy.

Because of all this, data loss is extremely rare. Permanent service outages are even rarer, requiring the serious faults at geographically dispersed locations. Service interruptions are possible, however, even with AWS’ level of redundancy and fault tolerance.

For example, an outage in US-EAST-1 Region on 30 July 2024 made Ring home security cameras and doorbells unusable. Numerous web services went down, including Goodreads. This outage wasn’t limited to online services: Whole Foods registers were down, and Amazon delivery drivers couldn’t complete their routes because the app they use when delivering packages was unavailable (Harris, 2024).

Cloud-based SCM software is certainly cost effective, permits visibility to supply chain partners, and data loss is avoided through periodic backups as well as redundant storage. Service outages do occur, and the 30 July 2024 outage shows that these outages have grave consequences to both online and real-world services.

References

AWS Documentation. (n.d.). “Regions and Availability Zones.” Retrieved 15 September 2024 from https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regions_az/

Harris, D. (2024). “AWS outage hits Amazon services, Ring, Whole Foods, Alexa.” CRN. Retrieved 15 September 2024 from https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/2024/aws-outage-hits-amazon-services-ring-whole-foods-alexa

Temjanovski, R., Bezovski, Z., & Apasieva, T. J. (2021). Cloud computing in logistic and supply chain management environment. Journal of Economics, 6(1), 23-32. Retrieved 15 September 2024 from https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/27861/2/4191-Article%20Text-6939-1-10-20210224.pdf

Supply Chain Disruptions: Boycotts

Concept

A supply chain disruption is an unexpected interruption in the flow of goods or services. Supply chain disruptions can be caused by demand volatility, transportation issues, supplier issues, talent shortages, political instability, pandemics, and various other reasons. For each of these categories, there are several specific types of causes. For example, demand volatility can be caused by seasonal demand variations, competitor actions, etc.

A source of demand volatility is through consumer boycotting. One can easily predict the effects a boycott would have on the targeted company: loss of revenue, tarnishing of corporate reputation, and erosion of customer loyalty. With the latter, the customer will consider using competing goods and services. The practical consequence of this is that if the customer happens to like the competitor better, that customer is potentially lost forever to the boycotted company. These are the immediate effects of a boycott. What are the consequences to the targeted company’s supply chain?

Research into the effects of boycotts on supply chain logistics crosses many academic lines including marketing, politics, and business management. A quick scholarly literature review on the effects of boycotts on supply chains frequently also include the effects of sanctions. These published texts tend to focus on multinational supply chains and evaluate the boycotts and sanctions through the criteria of DEI, ESG, corporate social advocacy, circular supply chains, and sustainability using the attendant leftist political philosophy. The overall thrust of this research is: "first world company boycotted - third world hardest hit."

A typical example of the effects of sanctions and boycotts is the research by Shalpegin and Kumar (2023). They do not supply concrete definitions of “sanctions” and “boycotts”, though they do differentiate them by stating that sanctions are mandated by authorities (governments, multinational organizations, or NGOs) whereas boycotts are implemented voluntarily. It is interesting to note that they do not consider the consequences to the boycotted company and its “local” supply chain but instead focus on the consequences to offshore suppliers that participate in the company's supply chain.

Shalpegin and Kumar (2023, pp. 3-5) state that suppliers are impacted through direct relationship with the targeted company (meaning that suppliers may also be boycotted or sanctioned). In addition, the suppliers may be unable to access foreign markets or certain forms of technology, as the supplier relied on the targeted company for access. Finally, there may be logistics failures for the supplier in the forms of bottlenecks and reduced capacity (See discussion in Quigg (2022, pp. 59-77)). These are the ways sanctions and boycotts travel among supply chain members, “jeopardizing the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion in supply chains.” (Shalpegin & Kumar, 2023, p. 1).

One of the solutions to the problems (real or imaginary) that Shalpegin and Kumar (2023, p. 5) identify is to shorten the supply chains, i.e., to use local sourcing. Local sourcing is not a complete solution, however. The ultimate form of local sourcing, nationalism, will obviously impact multinational enterprises (MNEs). Charpin (2021, p. 4) finds that “nationalism could engender supply chain disruptions via discriminatory practices toward all foreign MNEs and how national animosity may generate additional risks for the MNEs of nations in conflict with one another.” Charpin (2021, p. 8) is apparently comfortable with the concept of corporate nationality, but notes that this option is not legally supported. The solution Charpin (2021, p. 8) proposes is for MNEs to relocate their supply chain activities from offshore locations to home country locations. This activity protects a company from sanctions but still leaves them open to boycotts.

How damaging are boycotts to companies? King (2017) holds that “[w]hile boycotts rarely hurt revenues, they can threaten a company’s reputation, especially by generating negative media coverage.” Meanwhile, there seems to be no uniform agreement on the average duration of consumer boycotts. Levesque & Nam (2019) note that a boycott of Nestle lasted for seven years, while a boycott of Star-Kist lasted “almost no time at all.” Lasarov, Hoffman, and Orth (2023) also do not predict the duration of consumer boycotts, but they do note that during what they call the “heat-up phase” of a boycott, there is a sharp decrease of interest after two weeks. King (2017) notes that “we can’t pay attention to any single controversy for very long.” King recommended that “targeted companies might do better to simply “wait it out” rather than taking action in response to a boycott that might be in the news one day and out the next.”

Combining these two lines of research, one can conclude that boycotts – regardless of duration – have a minor negative impact on corporate revenue, and that “waiting it out” is a viable strategy. Thus, the consequences to the targeted company’s supply chain are negligible. Is this really the case?

Applications and Examples

With this as background, we examine two recent examples of boycotts. These boycotts show that “customer satisfaction” is more complicated than presented in Quigg (2022, pp. 103 – 110).

The first case we consider is the 2020 boycott of Goya, a large Latin food brand with markets in North America and Europe. Goya CEO and co-owner Robert Unanue praised President Donald Trump’s Hispanic Prosperity Initiative in July of 2020. Several Latino politicians and artists, most notably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Julian Castro, called for a boycott of the brand. Almost immediately a counter-boycott or “buycott” was started by supporters of Trump and Goya. At the end of 2020, Unanue sarcastically named Ocasio-Cortez as “employee of the month,” claiming that the boycott/buycott expanded Goya’s customer base resulting in a sales spike and prompted the opening of a new food production facility in Texas to meet increased demand.

Research by Liaukonytė et al (2022) pegged the sales spike at 22% overall, with an increase of 56.4% in Republican counties and no decrease in Democrat counties. In addition, there was no sales decrease among Goya’s core customer base. The sales spike dissipated within three weeks. Liaukonytė et al (2022) provide no information on the effects of the buycott on Goya’s supply chain, unfortunately.

The second boycott we consider is the 2023 boycott of Bud Light, which was caused by two events. The first event was the widespread recognition of comments by Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, stating the need to “evolve and elevate” the brand to be inclusive, stating that existing marketing was “fratty and [used] out-of-touch humor.”

The second event was the decision to use “trans-influencer” Dylan Mulvaney as a representative of this brave new inclusive world. At the time, Mulvaney was participating in a self-promotion campaign called “365 Days of Girlhood” which of course did not sit well with conservatives as well as members of the “LGB without the TQ” and “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” groups.

The resulting backlash was a boycott of Bud Light products (but not all AMBev products). Three months after the boycott began, Bud Light sales had decreased 28% compared to the same time in previous years. Analysis by Liaukonytė et al (2024) (the same researchers who investigated the Goya boycott) found that sales decreased 32% in Republican counties and 22% in Democrat counties.

Bud Light went silent on the issue, and the boycott continued. In the summer of 2023, the Human Rights Campaign excoriated Anheuser-Busch (Bud Light’s owner) stating that:

In this moment, it is absolutely critical for Anheuser-Busch to stand in solidarity with Dylan and the trans community. However, when faced with anti-LGBTQ+ and transphobic criticism, Anheuser-Busch’s actions demonstrate a profound lack of fortitude in upholding its values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This started a secondary boycott that may have resulted in the above-noted sales decrease in Democrat counties.

According to Liaukonytė et al (2024), sales of Bud Light were persistently down for at least eight months, with sales down by 32% in Q4 2023. Heinerscheid and other members of the marketing team left the company, though the exact dates and details of their departures have not been made public.

Liaukonytė et al (2024) did consider the effects this boycott had on Bud Light’s supply chain, stating that the ongoing decline resulted in:

retailers and distributors reducing shelf space for Bud Light, illustrating how boycotts can lead to a negative feedback loop. What started as a consumer-led boycott generated downstream adjustments from retailers and distributors. These supply-side adjustments hurt the brand’s visibility and further exacerbated the negative impact on Bud Light’s performance.

These two examples – the Goya boycott/buycott and the Bud Light boycott – fly in the face of the “conventional wisdom” on boycotts: they need not be the short-term affairs, the effects on company profits is not always negative and negligible, and it is not always best to “wait it out”.

 

References

Charpin, R. (2022). “The resurgence of nationalism and its implications for supply chain risk management.” International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management. 5(1), 4-28. https:// 10.1108/IJPDLM-01-2021-0019

King, B. (2017). “Do Boycotts Work?” Northwestern Institute for Policy Research. Retrieved 12 September 2024 from https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/news/2017/king-corporate-boycotts.html

Lasarov, W., Hoffmann, S., & Orth, U. (2023). Vanishing Boycott Impetus: Why and How Consumer Participation in a Boycott Decreases Over Time. Journal of Business Ethics 182(4), 1129–1154. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04997-9

Levesque, A. & Nam, J. (2019). “The Effect of Consumer Boycotting on the Stock Market.” https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/honorscollege_theses

Liaukonytė, J., Tuchman, A. & Zhu, X. (2022, August 11). “Spilling the Beans on Political Consumerism: Do Social Media Boycotts and Buycotts Translate to Real Sales Impact?” Marketing Science 42(1), 11-25. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.1386

Liaukonytė, J., Tuchman, A. & Zhu, X. (2024, March 20). “Lessons from the Bud Light Boycott, One Year Later.” Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 12 September 2024 from https://hbr.org/2024/03/lessons-from-the-bud-light-boycott-one-year-later

Quigg, B. (2022). Supply Chain Management (1st ed). McGraw-Hill Create. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781307866025

Shalpegin, T. & Kimar, A. (2023). "Undiversity, inequity, and exclusion in supply chains: The unintended fallout of economic sanctions and consumer boycotts." Production and Operations Management, 00, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.14001

Review of “Exploring the Potentials of Automation"

Abstract

This is a review of Nitsche’s “Exploring the Potentials of Automation in Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Paving the Way for Autonomous Supply Chains.” The article is the introduction to a special issue of the journal Logistics devoted to the automation of logistics and supply chain management. It describes the motivations for doing so and the particular areas of logistics most amiable to automation. The article then describes five levels of automation that are available for supply chain managers, then concludes with brief summaries of the other papers in this special issue.

This review begins with an outline of the major concepts used in the paper, then examines how supply chain management theory applies to these concepts. The managerial implications of this paper are explored, and the article is summarized. Finally, the coverage of the issues surrounding automation is appraised.

Author’s Purpose

The purpose of "Exploring the Potentials of Automation in Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Paving the Way for Autonomous Supply Chains" (Nitsche, 2021) is to serve as an introduction to a special edition of the Logistics journal devoted to how and why logistics and supply chain management systems should be automated. As it is an introduction, it defines some of the concepts used in the other six papers in the special issue. Based on these six papers, the author derives a five-level system describing the degree of automation present in any logistics or supply chain management system. This five-level system is sequential, meaning that it describes a progression pointing to the ultimate state of automation, which the author believes to be completely autonomous self-directed systems. The author completes this introduction by providing brief summaries of the other papers contained in the special issue.

Background of the Issue

Logistics and supply chain automation is defined as “the partial or full replacement or support of a human-performed physical or informational process by a machine. This includes tasks to plan, control or execute the physical flow of goods as well as the corresponding informational and financial flows within the focal firm and with supply chain partners.” (Nitsche et al., 2021, p. 225).

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the motivations for automating logistics and supply chain systems were to improve supply chain responsiveness and resilience while minimizing operating costs. COVID-19 provided another motivation: eliminate the dependency on human control and input. COVID-19 thus moved the goalpost from automation to being fully autonomous. (Wuest et al., 2020, p. 6-7)

Automation comes in many forms, and Nitsche (2021, p. 5) defines five levels of automation. Ranking these from most amount of human involvement to least, these levels are:

Remote control – this is the least amount of automation necessary for remote work; humans are involved with every decision.

Systems for assisting the user – all steps in the process being automated are predefined; there is no ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances.

Semi-automated systems with no self-learning – the ability to manage new situations is through “if-then” decisions, but the decisions themselves are predefined.

Semi-automated systems with self-learning - human intervention is only necessary in complex situations, and intervention becomes less frequent the longer the system is online.

Autonomous systems - human intervention is extremely rare; the system is self-learning, and is integrated into other relevant systems.

The author notes that fully autonomous systems are best able to overcome situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, since fully autonomous systems remove the impact that ill employees had on supply chain responsiveness and resilience.

Application of Relevant Supply Chain Management Theory

There are several goals for automating logistics and supply chain management. Of course, there are the desires to minimize costs and increase productivity. This latter desire is expressed through the concepts of supply chain resilience and supply chain responsiveness.

Supply chain resilience is the ability of the supply chain to “heal from disruptions.” The company must be able to respond to various types of disruptions and to quickly return to pre-disruption levels of throughput. One way of doing this is to use multiple suppliers and to trace dependencies among these suppliers – in other words, use a contemporary supply chain which involves multiple partners.

For an automated supply chain to be resilient, the company must have insight into the activities of its supply chain partners. This can hinder the conversion to automation, for it requires the company’s logistics automation system to work with those of its supply chain partners. This problem is not addressed in (Nitsche, 2021).

Supply chain responsiveness is the speed at which a supply chain can deliver demand. It can be calculated as the time needed to fulfill orders. In a sense, resilience is the opposite of responsiveness: responsiveness is the speed at which a supply chain operates under normal circumstances whereas resilience is the speed at which the supply chain recovers from abnormal circumstances.

There are numerous ways an automated supply chain furthers the goal of responsiveness. For example, the automated system can track items as they move through the supply chain. When a bottleneck occurs (Quigg, 2022, p. 59), depending on the level of automation the system can alert workers or interface with the appropriate supply chain partner’s supply chain system, thus resolving the bottleneck before this responsiveness issue becomes a resilience issue.

Responsiveness is a process performance metric (Quigg, 2022, p. 63), and automated supply chain systems should be able to calculate this metric since, again, it tracks items as they proceed through the supply chain. This is done by barcodes, RFID tags, etc. The automated system should present this information in the forms of dashboards or reports.

Managerial Implications of Article Findings

There are several important lessons a manager can extract from this paper. The paper includes a comprehensive definition of logistics and supply chain management automation, and a list of the advantages that automation can bring to the supply chain is provided (improved responsiveness, improved resilience, and minimized costs). All these advantages are the results of the successful completion of an automation process, but where to start the process?

For companies that have not yet begun logistics automation, the paper includes a wealth of information. While the paper does not include a step-by-step explanation of the process, it does describe the portions of logistics systems that are most amenable to automation (fulfillment, data exchange, and management). These are places to start. Automating a supply chain can be a lengthy process, and the process is described by various levels of automation (remote control, user assistance, semi-automated systems without self-learning, semi-automated systems with self-learning, and ending with fully autonomous systems). While the author recommends targeting a fully autonomous system, many benefits can be achieved at an earlier level.

The article explains some of the ways to measure the qualities of a proposed automation solution (technical maturity, system interoperability, data security, and quality). Finally, the article lists the people whose commitment is essential for the successful automation of their logistics system (top management, affected employees, and other stakeholders).

None of the disadvantages of automation are addressed in this paper. There are no estimates of either the total cost of ownership, or the financial benefits that come with automation, or the completion time. Also left unmentioned are the advantages and disadvantages to performing the automation using internal resources (software engineers, etc.) versus external contractors.

Given that modern supply chains consist of multiple partner companies acting in concert, the automation systems of the partner companies must be compatible. If not, human intervention is required for data entry or software engineers must develop “adapters.” Finally, there is no discussion of the need to thoroughly evaluate automation solutions before they go into production. Such systems are prone to hysteresis (feedback loops), which is the bane of many automated financial trading systems.

Finally, the paper makes a serious assumption about the abilities of fully autonomous systems. Can a fully autonomous system really anticipate black swan events and respond appropriately? We cannot expect fully autonomous systems to be omniscient, nor would we want them to be.

Summary of the Article and its Context

This article serves as the introduction to a special issue of Logistics devoted to logistics and supply chain management automation. The motivation for logistics automation lies in the need to reduce costs while increasing supply chain resiliency and responsiveness. The COVID-19 pandemic only increased the desire to not only automate logistics systems but to make them fully autonomous.

While automation can be applied throughout logistics, there are three fundamental dimensions that show the most improvement in operational effectiveness: fulfillment, data exchange, and management. For a company with no logistics automation, these three areas are considered the best places to start.

The article then lists five levels of automation (remote control, user assistance, semi-automated systems - no self-learning, semi-automated systems - with self-learning, and autonomous systems) with decreasing levels of human interaction. It is the last stage, fully autonomous systems, which provides the most durability against situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

As mentioned above, this article is the introduction of a special issue of Logistics devoted to logistics automation, and there are six other papers in that special issue that address a wide range of subjects, from the impact of cloud storage and the internet of things on automation to the use of autonomous trucks for last mile delivery. This article concludes with brief summaries of those other six papers.

Conclusion

Nitsche’s paper (Nitsche, 2021) includes valuable information about logistics automation, most importantly on the various levels of automation. The paper is one sided in that it covers the advantages of automation while glossing-over the disadvantages. The lack of discussion on the drawbacks of automated systems, especially fully autonomous systems, is troubling, and thus this paper cannot be recommended as a reliable source of information for supply chain managers considering automation.

References

Nitsche, B. (2021). Exploring the potentials of automation in logistics and supply chain management: Paving the way for autonomous supply chains. Logistics 5(51), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.3390/logistics5030051

Nitsche, B., Straube, F., & Wirth, M. (2021). Application areas and antecedents of automation in logistics and supply chain management: A conceptual framework. Supply Chain Forum Int. J. 22(3), 223–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/16258312.2021.1934106

Quigg, B. (2022). Supply Chain Management (1st ed). McGraw-Hill Create. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781307866025

Wuest, T., Kusiak, A., Dai, T., & Tayur, S.R. (2020, May 5). Impact of COVID-19 on manufacturing and supply networks—The case for AI-inspired digital transformation. SSRN Electron. J. 2020. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3593540

Review of “The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need”

Introduction

In his 2020 paper “The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need,” Gregory Foster[1] appears to make a reasonable suggestion: that our military should be geared to missions it will be likely to encounter in the next few years instead of fighting highly unlikely conventional conflicts with China or Russia. The missions he envisions do not fall into the military’s purview, however, and the overall future direction he proposes for the military would not pass muster either against contemporary National Defense Strategy documents.

The 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, received 29 M1A2 Abrams tanks, Sept. 26, 2014, at Fort Hood, Texas. Photo by U.S. Army

Summary

Gregory Foster’s "The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need" begins with his reading of the 2018 National Defense Strategy[2], claiming it represents the "intellectual stagnation that pervades the military." He summarizes it through four points:

1. The U.S. military has been emasculated and "rendered largely impotent by forcing it to focus on frivolous, tangential threats and missions such as countering violent extremism."[3]
2. The U.S. military is in danger of being replaced as the world's premiere fighting force.
3. Our current and future strategic situation is defined by great power competition (GPC).
4. To compete in this era of GPC, our organizational, doctrinal, and technological methods must emphasize lethality.

Foster derides all this as a rehashing of Cold War ideology and is "woefully and dangerously outmoded, outdated, self-serving, self-deluding, and self-perpetuating such received truths are."[4] Our true adversaries are “pandemic disease, cyberattacks, climate-induced natural disasters, and violent, rogue-actor extremism." These choices of "frivolous, tangential threats and missions" fit into a framework for military history that Foster proposes. He divides military history into four phases:

Hot war - practiced since antiquity, the use of force played a significant role in the conduct of statecraft.

Cold war - defining characteristic was detente, the avoidance of using force against a major power. Direct force was replaced by the use of proxies such as in the Korean and Vietnam Wars

New war - this is our current historical state, in which non-military power and non-traditional uses of the military offer the most promise for success but must struggle for legitimacy against the forces of tradition and stagnation. New war carries with it an imperative to redefine what militaries properly do.

The trajectory of all this is a future historical phase which Foster calls "No War" which he insists we should all be seeking. In this future state, militaries as currently conceived are made obsolete. We are prevented from getting this future state by a combination of tradition, the military-industrial complex, and the properties of a well-functioning (conventional) military - it is necessary to add that adjective because Foster imagines a different type of military as described below.

The primary problem we face, Foster insists, is that our military is not adapted to the real threats - the military we have is not the military we need. The wars we face are asymmetric and therefore, Foster asserts, are inherently unwinnable. In addition, "pandemics, natural disasters, cyberattacks, and random acts of violent extremism are very real, very serious, very deadly, and very demanding."

The issue then becomes: should we prepare for conventional wars with Russia or China, which are unlikely, or the "wars" (his quotes) we will face?

Fundamental to this is a question Foster asks: "what the military’s role properly ought to be: to serve itself (in the manner of a self-interested interest group); to serve the regime in power; to serve the state; or to serve society and even humanity (as grandiose as that might sound)?"

Foster concludes with (more) denigration of our current military and describes what the military should be: "The military we need would be quite the opposite: light, constructive, predominantly nonlethal, precise, noncombat-oriented, manpower-dominant, tailored, multilaterally-capable/-dependent, reassuring, de-escalatory, affordable, and sustainable. It would be a strategically effective force, designed to respond to a robust array of complex, most-frequently-occurring emergencies – peacekeeping, nation-building, humanitarian assistance, disaster response – that ultimately contribute most demonstrably to the overarching normative strategic aim of enduring global peace."

Analysis

First, we must address Foster's four criticisms of the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS):

1. That the military was emasculated and forced to focus on frivolous missions is true, and Foster goes on to propose more frivolous missions.
2. The U.S. can indeed be replaced as the world's premiere fighting force, but through two methods: spending by a near-peer power or by our own neglect.
3. The NDS is quite flexible in who our military competitors will be and allows for both great powers as well as non-state actors and other competitors acting asymmetrically. It also addresses cyber warfare and the threats posed by hackers.
4. Yes, the NDS focuses on lethality, which is what any good military should be.

While Foster is correct in stating that the military required by the NDS is enormously expensive; he proposes to replace this with an enormously expensive public works project addressing the problems of "pandemics, natural disasters, cyberattacks, and random acts of violent extremism."[5]

One of Foster's criticisms of the U.S. military is that "[u]nilateralism (and the attendant felt need for self-sufficiency) dominates multilateralism (with the attendant imperative for collective decision-making and action)." [6]This is blatantly false, as demonstrated by not only the body of doctrine involving partner nations, annual multinational training operations, and operations where we went out of our way to build coalitions, such as the 2003 Coalition of the Willing built in preparation of the Iraq war. Indeed, strengthening alliances and attracting new partners is one of the goals of the NDS.

Foster describes the wars we face today as "entirely wars of choice. No existing conflict, nor any reasonably to be anticipated, demands our involvement. And the wars we face are far removed from the total wars of the distant past and even farther removed from an idealized state of stable peace we have yet to seriously pursue, much less achieve."[7] How did we get to this condition where we only face wars of choice? Will the changes he proposes allow us to only fight wars of choice? Doesn't Foster know about this thing called "deterrence?" Foster also does not consider the time needed to rebuild the military should the U.S. need to pursue one of these older types of wars.

The idea that "pandemics, natural disasters, cyberattacks, and random acts of violent extremism" necessarily require military solutions is not proven. Further, does this cover pandemics released as biological weapons? What about pandemics or epidemics that seem to follow the election cycle?

Are asymmetric wars inherently unwinnable? Examination of the historical record shows that asymmetrical warfare has been practiced in some form since at least the time of Sun Tzu - his Art of War is applicable to both symmetric and asymmetric forms of warfare. Further, there are numerous examples of asymmetric wars being won by the defending nation. Finally, authors such as Mao Tse-Tung claim that asymmetric war can and should convert to symmetric war, as demonstrated by the Communist Revolution in China.

Is the "No War" historical state achievable? Is it even desirable? Or is it the case, as George Santayana wrote, that “only the dead have seen the end of war.” Foster does not answer these questions.

Foster’s Proposed Course of Action

Much like his analysis of military history pointing towards a "No War" end state, his conception of a future military is also pointing towards a course of action, but what? The answer is not in "The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need" but rather in an earlier paper Foster authored and was published in CounterPunch[8]. During the "No War" phase, traditional militaries will become obsolete, and their main activity will be to "demilitarize the military."[9]

The paper in CounterPunch does not address why asymmetric wars are unwinnable, but Foster does write: "Douglas MacArthur famously said, “There is no substitute for victory.” Today there is no possibility of victory."[10] Another of his papers, published in Salon[11], also does not answer this assertion. The Salon article does explicitly state that demilitarizing would involve both nuclear disarmament as also general and complete non-nuclear disarmament.

Conclusion

Foster, in "The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need," besides seriously mischaracterizing the NDS, also seems to be unaware of the concepts of deterrence and the doctrine of joint operations. His idea of non-military missions is covered in the March 2021 “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance.”[12] His plans for demilitarizing the military will not be possible even in the 2022 "National Defense Strategy,"[13] however.

Footnotes

[1] Foster, "The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need."
[2] Department of Defense, "Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America."
[3] Foster, "The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need."
[4] All quotes for the remainder of this section are from Foster, "The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need."
[5] Foster, "The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need."
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Foster, "Demilitarizing the Military."
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Foster, G. "Let's demilitarize the military.”
[12] The White House, “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance.”
[13] Department of Defense, "2022 National Defense Strategy."

Bibliography

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Review of “A Cloud-Based Supply Chain Management System"

Abstract

This is a review of “A cloud-based supply chain management system: effects on supply chain responsiveness” by Giannakis, Spanaki, and Dubey. Their paper illustrates the shortcomings of traditional enterprise software in the face of modern supply chains, supply chains that involve multiple partners working collaboratively to regularly produce goods and services. To address these deficiencies, they design a cloud-based supply chain management system.

This review begins with an overview of the major concepts used in the paper (supply chain responsiveness and cloud computing), then examines the inadequacies that Giannakis, Spanaki, and Dubey find in traditional enterprise software. We next examine their architecture for a cloud-based alternative and verify that their proposed system does satisfy and enhance the three criteria they claim makes for a responsive supply chain. We demonstrate how supply chain management theory applies, and then conclude with the managerial implications of the findings in that paper.

Authors’ Purpose

Modern supply chains are no longer single-company affairs, and instead frequently involve competing suppliers of materiel and services. Giannakis, Spanaki, and Dubey seek to answer the following two questions about this situation. First, are enterprise IT solutions for supply chain management sufficient to supervise these modern supply chains with extension into the enterprise? Second, can cloud-based supply chain management systems resolve any of the shortcomings of enterprise IT systems?

Their answer to the first question is no: IT solutions that are not usable by external participants in the supply chain do not support the desired goal of a responsive supply chain, the main difficulty being that supply chain participants do not have visibility into the supply chain.

The answer to the second question must be justified by at least a description of a cloud-based supply chain management system. The authors do this by presenting a somewhat detailed architecture of such a system. They then show that their proposed architecture addresses all the criteria for a supply chain to be responsive.

Background Concepts

The goal which Giannakis, Spanaki, and Dubey seek to achieve is supply chain responsiveness (SCR), which can be defined as the speed at which a supply chain can deliver demand and can be measured in terms of the time needed to fulfill orders. (Quigg, 2022).

Software systems available to a single company, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, all fail to satisfy at least one of those qualities. ERP and similar solutions do not allow the multiple participants in a modern supply to be interoperable – the systems fail to make relevant information visible to the participants.

Cloud computing moves the creation and maintenance of computing resources to a specialized department or, more commonly, to a third party. Moving to a third party allows for the commercialization of networks, servers, applications, storage, etc., so that they can be leased and released by users on-demand. Cloud service features include on-demand services, resource pooling, rapid elasticity (change in size or capacity on an as-needed basis), broad network access, and measured and rate-limited service. The benefits of all this include dynamic scalability, outsourced management, and lower total cost of ownership.

The business model of cloud computing involves service providers (owners of the cloud infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, etc.), customers (users), and brokers (e.g., AWS resellers who provide additional support). Thus, a customer may use a service provider directly, or use a broker for specialized consulting, additional technical support, etc.

The services provided by cloud service providers can be grouped into three broad layers: SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. Software as a service (SaaS) involves licensing software and making it available via subscription. Platform as a service (PaaS) is a complete development and deployment environment that allows users to execute and manage custom applications. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is on-demand cloud-based hosting of servers, network resources, and storage. Cloud service providers can certainly run a wide variety of software applications, but the application type that most interests Giannakis, Spanaki, and Dubey is cloud-based supply chain management (C-SCM).

Summary of Article and its Context

After defining the criteria a responsive supply chain must possess, Giannakis, Spanaki, and Dubey evaluate enterprise software in light of the fact that contemporary supply chains involve multiple suppliers of goods and services. They come to the decision that ERP and other enterprise applications are not up to the task, the primary weakness being that the applications do not provide visibility into the supply chain partners.

The alternative they propose is a cloud-based solution. To demonstrate this, they propose an architecture for this solution. There are six separate modules in their system.

First is a pool of traditional SCM applications, deployed as loosely coupled services, each designed according to a service-oriented architecture paradigm. Second is one or more databases for storing relevant information about orders, inventories, etc. Next is a business process management system (BPM) that allows business rules to be enforced and reconfigured as needed. Fourth is one or more business intelligence applications which provide visibility into the supply chain in the form of dashboards and reports. All of these are connected using an enterprise service bus (ESB) for signaling low inventory warnings, new orders, etc. Finally, there is an application developer’s kit that allows software developers to modify the code. As shown in the following diagram from (Giannakis, Spanaki, & Dubey, 2019), modules will exist in the three levels of cloud architecture: as software as a service, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service:

Giannakis, Spanaki, and Dubey then demonstrate that their architecture permits visibility into the supply chain (via SCM applications and business intelligence applications), rapid detection and response to risks (via the database and BPM rules operating on it), and the ability to adapt to demand uncertainties (via SCM applications, the ESB, and ultimately the application developers’ kit). Thus, the three qualities they claim make a supply chain responsive are satisfied.

Application of Relevant Supply Chain Management Theory

As stated above, Giannakis, Spanaki, and Dubey wish to apply cloud computing to bring about supply chain responsiveness (SCR), something they claim ERP solutions have failed to accomplish. SCR can be measured in terms of the rate at which a supply chain allows orders to be fulfilled (Quigg, 2022), but this can be difficult to measure when a supply chain produces products/outcomes of widely varying complexity, or when a statistically insignificant number of products are produced. A different approach is needed.

In the literature reviewed in (Giannakis, Spanaki, & Dubey, 2019), three qualities of a responsive supply chain are identified: visibility of information, rapid detection and response to supply chain risks, and flexibility to adapt to demand uncertainties by altering operations, capabilities, and strategic objectives.

While a single company may have complete visibility into its supply chain, a modern supply chain involves multiple providers of materiel and services, and visibility is not always available to all the participants. Visibility into a supply chain is fundamental to the other two qualities.

For a supply chain to continue operations, a system must be in place to rapidly detect risks and overcome them. Detecting and overcoming risks involves visibility into the supply chains and stock levels of partner companies, at least.

Finally, responding to demand uncertainties can involve increasing or decreasing orders from supply chain participants, increasing or decreasing the number of competing participants, or changing expectations. Visibility into supply chain participants again is crucial.

Conclusion - Managerial Implications

Supply chain responsiveness is crucial to a company’s success, since rapidly and consistently fulfilling customer orders is the determining factor of success. Giannakis, Spanaki, and Dubey show that traditional software solutions such as ERP do not provide visibility into modern supply chains, which involve multiple providers. The alternative they propose, a cloud-based supply chain management (C-SCM) system, addresses the problems of ERP systems that can degrade a supply chain’s responsiveness.

Creating a C-SCM first involves choosing a cloud service provider, which can be either internal to the company or a separate provider dedicated to the task. There are advantages and disadvantages to either approach.

Hosting a C-SCM internally provides the greatest control of the company’s data, since the data is kept within the company’s own servers. The primary disadvantage to internal hosting is that supply chain partners must be granted access to the company’s network, and partner companies must grant access to their own networks as well. Thus, security is a major concern here, and internal controls must be expanded and tightened.

Internal hosting will likely require that new hardware be purchased, because available servers may not be sufficiently powerful to operate a C-SCM system. Using separate servers increases network security because payroll and other systems not part of the C-SCM system will be hosted on different servers.

Using a cloud service provider has the advantages that no hardware need be purchased, and that the service provider has automated security and backup systems in place. The disadvantage is that, depending on the service provider’s terms of service, the company no longer owns its own data, as demonstrated by recent events at Adobe (Kaput, 2024). Also, migrating from cloud to cloud is not an easy task and is actively discouraged by cloud service providers.

The cost of operating a cloud service must also be considered. With an internally hosted C-SCM, the responsibility of maintaining the hardware, network, and software all falls on the company itself. Utilities for performing periodic backups must be configured, periodic security checks must be performed, and any security vulnerabilities must be addressed. Thus, the cost of internal hosting not only involves the initial hardware cost but also the cost of network engineers and security architects, and their salaries are dictated by Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Salaries for network engineers and basic services provided by security architects are either covered in the cloud service provider’s fees or are paid for on an as-needed basis.

A cost that remains the same when either internally hosting or using a cloud service provider is the software development cost. In both cases, software development and QA teams are necessary to write and validate the C-SCM system’s code.

Moving from an enterprise supply chain management system to a C-SCM is a daunting task, fraught with potential security vulnerabilities and cost overruns. The advantages a C-SCM provides to a modern supply chain in terms of insight and visibility into the supply chain can outweigh those difficulties.

 

References

Christopher, M. (2011). Logistics and Supply Chain Management (4th ed). Prentice Hall. Retrieved 1 September 2024 from https://www.ascdegreecollege.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logistics_and_Supply_Chain_Management.pdf

Giannakis, M., Spanaki, K., & Dubey, R. (2019). “A cloud-based supply chain management system: effects on supply chain responsiveness.” Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 32(4), 585-607. Retrieved 1 September 2024 from https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JEIM-05-2018-0106/full/html

Kaput, M. (2024). “Adobe’s Controversial AI Policy Faces Fierce Backlash.” Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. Retrieved 1 September 2024 from https://www.marketingaiinstitute.com/blog/adobe-terms-of-use

Quigg, B. (2022). Supply Chain Management (1st ed). McGraw-Hill Create. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781307866025