The rise of global sourcing as a means to minimize costs has had the unintended consequence of increasing risk. Dependence on an increasing number of suppliers makes it difficult to monitor their performance without automated metrics. According to a 2013 Supply Chain Resilience Survey, 75 percent of organizations experienced at least one supply chain disruption incident in the past year.

No doubt about it - consumer packaged goods companies are drowning in data today.

Carrier Transicold has launched its CareMAX program. The offering creates protocols to help the company's 400-plus container service centers manage refrigerants and related suppliers.

Analyst Insight: In July 2013, Mary Driscoll of APQC had an interesting headline in the Harvard Business Review Blog — "Why are Companies Continually Getting Blind-sided by Risk?" Their risk management survey highlighted that 75 percent of respondents stated they were hit by at least one major supply chain disruption over the past two years. Another key finding: people at the front lines of business were hamstrung by lack of resources for visibility needed to adequately assess their supply chain risk. – Gregory L. Schlegel, Founder, The Supply Chain Risk Management Consortium, and Adjunct Professor, Supply Chain Risk Management, Lehigh University

Analyst Insight: As the concept of supply chain risk management matures into a discipline, we witnessed that most disciplines need frameworks to ensure initial success and sustainability. This is holding true for the growth and maturity of SCRM. The Association for Operations Management, or APICS, has embraced SCRM by working with the Risk Consortium to create a first-of-a-kind certificate in SCRM, providing a solid baseline for what a framework is and how it supports a successful supply chain journey. – Gregory L. Schlegel, Founder, The Supply Chain Risk Management Consortium, Adjunct Professor, Supply Chain Risk Management, Lehigh University, and Adjunct Professor, Enterprise Risk Management, Villanova University