This week, the FT had a special section on supply chains and risk management. It was mainly very good, but one passage struck a funny note:
The risks are wide-ranging. According to Alan Braithwaite, a logistics consultant, manufacturers have become increasingly interested in the last year in services pinpointing the risks for each company of events such as dock strikes.
One bathroomware manufacturer, according to Prof Braithwaite, came “perilously close” to serious problems after last January’s rising in Egypt against the regime of Hosni Mubarak. The violence made it impossible to move lavatories and other products from the Egyptian factory where it had based its manufacturing for Europe.
“Those sorts of geopolitical things are also a factor that companies should be starting to look at,” Prof Braithwaite says.
Is there something a bit bath-etic (geddit?) about this analysis? I hadn’t really grasped that what was at stake on the streets of Cairo was Europe’s bidet supplies…
