Whilst the academic debate on how to calculate carbon footprints is a never-ending story and companies are still struggling to see where to reduce their CO2 emissions, there are at least some tools that help visualising the basic idea. Here’s the recipe: Take a product (or a food item), add its parts and raw materials, the location of these, the energy used to produce them, the transportation mode etc. and draw a map of your CO2 emissions. You can change each of the parameters (i.e. what if you suddenly produced a part with say, wind power instead of the general electric grid or what if the location of a supplier was different) and play with the results. You can even browse the maps of others. My favourites are a homemade bacon omelette and the typical laptop computer. What is yours?
Gyöngyi
PS Credits for the link to Niko Solitander and the Economic Geography mailing list. It takes a geographer to visualise a supply chain 
Categories: Carbon management · Popular science · Socks and sandals · Supply Chain Management
Finally, supply chain risk management is no more academic utopia or a mere consultant buzz word but is discussed in the boardroom. According to a survey by the Economics’ Intelligence Unit (which refers back to the Ericsson vs. Nokia comparison case as discussed years earlier by Norrman and Jansson), supply chain resilience can indeed be linked to profitability – especially during economic downturns. But also otherwise, the (perceived) magnitude of many supply chain disruptions is on the rise.
Gyöngyi
Categories: Popular science · Supply Chain Management
This is taking open source papers such as in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) and discussions (in OM more known from JOM’s discussion forum) somewhat further: user-based “academic” content to discuss online; the launch of AcaWiki. Considering Wikipedia’s success (or failure) it will be interesting to see how they’ll deal with quality assurance beyond discussion entries.
Gyöngyi
Categories: Popular science · Socks and sandals
September 29, 2009 · 3 Comments
Facility location has fascinated geographers, logisticians, and ultimately, supply chain researchers for a long time. There are all the obvious push and pull factors, proximity to suppliers and markets, transportation rates etc. But what do you do if you have some sort of reason to locate a facility in the middle of nowhere (or a legacy of being located in the middle of nowhere)? Jan Husdal has now explored this question in terms of “sparse transportation networks”. Here it is. Delightful reading.
Gyöngyi
Categories: Popular science · Socks and sandals · Transport geography
There is sthg funny about research. One should find her/his own niche (the “gap“) but still have people to discuss with. A critical mass is necessary to establish outlets and meeting places (conferences etc.), attract general interest and even funding. It’s important to know the others in the same field, but then again, how do you define “same field”? And who are the relevant (not to say significant) others, just anyone who jumped the bandwagon, or those who actually contributed to the field?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Popular science · Socks and sandals
Finally someone is taking web 2.0, 3.0 and x.0 seriously and wants to write a handbook on its use and implications for research, including social and cultural as well as ethical issues that might arise.
Chapter proposals are due on Apr 5, 2008 and should be sent to San Murugesan (san1@internode.on.net).
Gyöngyi
Categories: Call for papers · Popular science
What comes to your mind if you were to think of a book that is fascinating to the extent that you can’t put it down and read it in one go? A book that has an interesting storyline? One that is spiced up with references you could actually use in your research? And examples for your teaching? That reads like a novel?
Any suggestions? No? Now what about this, a book about containers. Something the author himself calls “[a] soulless aluminum or steel box held together with welds and rivets, with a wooden floor and two enormous doors at one end: the standard container has all the romance of a tin can“. This is not a misprint, rather, me being surprised how you can write such a fascinating piece on “the box” (which is actually the title of the book). Popular science meeting SCM. And I say SCM because of the links Marc Levinson makes between containerisation and globalisation, enabling first international trade, then global supply chains – where transportation costs can almost be neglected. It links a number of disciplines, from transportation to macro-economics, transport geography to economic geography, political economics and industrial relations – just and only via one innovation and how it changed the world. Obviously, “[t]he value of this utilitarian object lies not in what it is, but in how it is used.”
There are lots of reviews of the book to be found, including interviews with the author, essays putting it into perspective – but I can only recommend to read the book itself.
Gyöngyi
PS. Thanks to Marianne Jahre for recommending the book!
Categories: Book review · Popular science
