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Case Study Japanese Earthquake

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Submitted By yukisamadaisuki
Words 1181
Pages 5
Yixin Gao

Case Analysis #1

Sep 21

Supply Chain Lessons from Catastrophic Natural Disaster in Japan

Supply chain management refers to the management of the flow of goods and services from the suppliers to the producers then to the consumers. The supply chain can however get hit by natural, economic or even humanitarian system disruption. In case of this event of disaster strike, companies have to come up with supply chain risk management to prevent their businesses from collapsing. With case study on some Japanese companies, this paper gives an analysis of how these manufacturing firms responded to Japan’s recent disaster strike, the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Japan’s recent earthquake attack of 8.9-magnitude on its northeast coast was a devastating one. The tsunami which shortly followed the earthquake made everything even more severe. This led to destruction of property and loss of lives (Park et al., 75). Many were also forced to evacuate their homes as the earthquake and tsunami destroyed thousands of homes, leaving about 550,000 people homeless. The number of deaths was very high, exceeding 86,000, with 13,000 missing. Altogether, this was one of the most costly disasters caused by earthquake and tsunami, registering damage cost of about 235 billion dollars (Park et al., 75).

The damages caused by these two natural disasters in Japan disrupted the supply chain, both globally and domestically. As a result, the disruptions caused negative impacts on several foreign and local manufacturing firms. Examples of companies that were affected include Toyota, Chrysler, Ford, Volkswagen, GM and BMW. These automakers depend on Japan as a supplier country, and therefore the earthquake and tsunami cut of supply of some materials to them (Park et al., 76). Another blow to the automotive industry in the world was experienced when the disaster in Japan

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