Phil Renaud, executive director of The Risk Institute at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, runs down the level of risk to supply chains created by relationships with third parties — and relates how a certain type of third party can help to mitigate it.

Al Guarnieri, partner in the law firm of Parker Poe, details how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the planning efforts of manufacturers in the short, medium and long term.

Brad Simmons, managing partner with KAI Design, speculates about the form that the office of the future will take, to accommodate the need for social distancing as well as permanent remote workers.

For many years, pharmaceutical companies have struggled to track products through the supply chain. This drawback has made it easy for counterfeiters to introduce fake drugs into the market.

Conan Ward, president and general manager of RubiQon Risk,  a newly formed subsidiary of QOMPLX, details the evolution of the cyber-risk insurance industry, and describes how it can protect manufacturers against loss from cyberattacks.

As if damage to people and supply chains by the coronavirus pandemic and economic freefall weren’t bad enough, add to it the greater difficulty of monitoring human rights violations in distant farms and factories.

Most of us fashion ourselves as rational beings, willing to change our minds when presented with facts that contradict our position. What a lovely fantasy.