Supply chain and logistics management is much more than getting manufactured goods from factories in China to shelves in suburban America in time for holiday shopping. For some supply chains, careful management can be a matter of life and death. Take, for example, the risks in moving fuel and supplies to troops in landlocked Afghanistan.

With constant change, economic challenges and the havoc that events such as Gulf oil spills, natural disasters and terrorist threats can create, old models of balancing supply and demand are no longer effective. In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Sandor Boyson, research professor and co-director of the Supply Chain Management Center, discusses the new risks for today’s supply chains and how organization can deal with volatility.

College Park, Md. – Oct. 6, 2010 – The Supply Chain Management Center at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business is bringing together top industry and government leaders to address inefficiencies in today’s supply chain and come up with innovative ways to manage risk.

Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, Oct. 24, 2010, 7:30 a.m.; Monday, Oct. 25, 2010, 4:30 a.m. Managing a VolatileSupply Chain     With constant change, economic challenges and the havoc that events such as Gulf oil spills, natural disasters and terrorist threats can create, old models of balancing supply and demand are no longer effective.

Smith School thought leadership and research is prominently featured in the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Information Technology Report, released on April 9, 2008. Within the report Sandor Boyson, co-director of the Supply Chain Management Center at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, and co-author David Boyer, a research scientist with Avaya Labs, offer a blueprint for nations to better leverage emerging communications capabilities and technologies to spur economic and social development.

College Park, Md. March 27, 2007 - Teams from top business schools throughout the United States, Europe and Asia competed today in the first-ever Global Supply Chain Competition, a revolutionary real-time simulation developed by researchers at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Competition sponsor Sun Microsystems, Inc., donated prizes and powerful servers to host the Web-based game, in which players competed virtually from their home campuses to manage the most efficient supply chain.

In June, the University of Maryland/Smith School and co-sponsors (the World Bank Institute, the U.S. Agency For International Development, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Cisco, and Avaya) welcomed leaders from around the globe to a workshop focused on identifying the intellectual and conceptual underpinnings and skills profile for a new type of development executive, the E-Leader.

Research by Thomas Corsi and Sandor Boyson

Pfizer’s COVID vaccine must stay super cold – between -112° and -76°F. Here's what that means for the vaccine supply chain.

Even with the federal program Operation Warp Speed projecting readiness for distribution, “coordination and funding” across the coronavirus supply chain will need to be better developed.