Though a long-standing challenge, the need to anticipate exposures and manage risks in order to diminish disruption of business has grown significantly in recent times as the supply chain has become increasingly interdependent and complex. This article, reprinted from Forbes.com (June 2, 2006), addresses managing risks in the supply chain through data warehousing.

According to AMR Research, "a single point of failure . . . can have a catastrophic effect on a company's global supply chain," and according to a recent AMR Research study, there are a "number of strategies and technologies that could help enterprises better manage risk." One such technology is data warehousing.

According to Jerry Hill, Director of Supply Chain Solutions at Teradata, "it (is) of primary importance to gather, maintain, and organize the company's data in a data warehouse." With clean, high-quality data, a company can then use analytical tools to monitor and improve its enterprise.

In this article, Hill summarizes three major tenets of risk management using data warehousing:

• "Company data should be leveraged to detect the early warning signs of a problem brewing . . . By using a data warehouse, a company can perform statistical process control against it and flag an early warning sign."
• "A company's system should be configured to give managers very precise and timely decision-making information."
• "Managers must be able to model anticipated events through the use of the data warehouse."