Challenges in the Era of Globalization - iaabd

Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference © 2011 IAABD
social political actions (8); lack of trust with partners (9); electric power shortage and outage (10);
information delays, scarcity, sharing (11); infrastructure breakdown (12); contract failure (13); degree of
control over logistics operations 14); weaknesses in the national, regional, and local infrastructure (15);
supplier product/material quality failures (16); supply chain logistics security breaches (17); rising energy
costs (18); rising transportation costs; and It risks (19), loom large as potential blind spots for INEC,
suppliers, logistics providers, and customers or voters to sustaining a consistent state of operations
continuity. For example, a disruption in supply can be triggered by force majeure, accidents, supplier
failure/reliability, terrorism, social-political actions and in each case will have the same severity.
Following the MIT-RPG (2003), the six different types of failure modes include disruption in supply,
disruption in transportation, Disruption at facilities, Freight breaches, disruption in communications, and
disruption in demand are reported in Table 1. Supply chain failure mode describes how a physical
product/materials or process may fail to meet end-users’ requirements or value expectations.
Table 1. Potential Supply Chain Failure Modes
Failure Description
Disruption in supply Unavailability or delay (late delivery) of election materials from
vendors (or suppliers) that can result in a shortage of ballot papers that
could impede the conduct of elections.
Disruption in demand Delay or disruption in the arrival of elections materials and staff at the
polling stations can discourage voters from participating in the
electoral process. Thus, affecting the credibility of the electoral
Disruption in
transportation
process.
Unavailability (unreliability) of transportation infrastructure that could
delay the inbound and outbound transportation of electoral sensitive
materials.
Disruption at facilities Disturbances or attacking of the polling stations due to lack of security
can inhibit normal elections logistics operations.
Freight breaches Violation of the integrity of cargoes and materials that can lead to loss
or tampering of materials, and delay in electoral process.
Disruption in
communications
Supply Chain Risk (Blind Spot) Management
Delay or unavailability of information and communication
Infrastructure within or outside the INEC that can impair its ability to
coordinate logistics operations and execute a successful elections.
Handfield (n. d) contends that “the foundation for a solid supply chain risk management program includes
improved knowledge of where the disruptions may occur, and training to know when and how to
respond.” Qiang et al (2008) argue that the goal of supply chain risk management is to reduce the impacts
of disruptive risks or to enhance the supply chain robustness. Managing and mitigating supply chain
disruptions have become crucial for organizations’ survival in today’s turbulent global environment. Risk
management entails the process of identifying, assessing, and managing the risk in an organization’s
operational strategy. It is the quintessential part of an operational strategy that must be incorporated into
organization’s risk management program. A risk management approach can have three elements
including assessments of threat, vulnerabilities, and consequences. Specifically, risk =
(threats)(vulnerabilities)(consequences). Threats include terrorism associated social-political actions,
cargo theft of election sensitive materials, kidnapping, hijacking of ballot boxes, government instability,
parties’ issues, and general integrity of people and/or election staff. Vulnerability entails the ability to
deter, detect, delay, and respond to blind spots, including general security, procedural security, physical
access controls, physical security, transportation security, IT security, and threat awareness. Consequence
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