Dow asks MSU for supply chain security check up

Dow asks MSU for supply chain security check up    Dow Chemical Co. has sponsored Michigan State University to assess and benchmark its supply chain security practices, said Henry Ward, the chemical manufacturer’s director of transportation safety and security.
   Under the arrangement, researchers will survey security measures and management practices employed by the company throughout its supply chain. Ward, speaking last week at the Maritime Security Expo in New York, said the university will provide an independent view of the health of Dow’s supply chain security above the company’s own internal assessments, and serve as a best practices guide for the rest of the chemical industry.
   Michigan State, which has a highly ranked logistics program, will develop a methodology for companies to assess their own supply chains based on similar work the university did for the food and pharmaceutical industries.
   The university will provide Dow a private report of its findings as well as a public report to serve as a template for other chemical shippers. The public report will exclude sensitive information about Dow.
   Dow has a far-flung supply and distribution network responsible for moving 2.5 million product shipments per year, 20 percent of which are international in nature. The Midland, Mich.-based chemical producer is the sixth-largest U.S. exporter and the 54th-largest U.S. importer. It uses all the major railroads in North America, more than 50 trucking companies and two dozen ocean carriers to transport its products.
   Dow has been an early adopter of industry best practices in an effort to show customers and government regulators that it is a low-risk company entitled to be exempt from most security inspections and therefore able to make on-time deliveries. Dow is a member of the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism under which the U.S. government grants expedited clearance to shippers that implement strong production and shipment controls along foreign supply routes. Ward said he anticipated the MSU study would be shared with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which manages C-TPAT.
   Dow was one of a handful of companies that participated in a recent study by Stanford University designed to show that some companies are realizing improved sales and efficiency as a byproduct of security systems that provide the status of inventory in motion. The study summarized the process improvements experienced by 11 manufacturers, but did not break out results for each company.
   At the security expo, Ward quantified several ways that Dow has benefited from deploying security and technology systems for logistics purposes:
   * 50 percent improvement in response time to in-transit problems.
   * 20 percent reduction in safety stock.
   * 20 percent reduction in the size of its container fleet because of better asset utilization.
   * 90 percent improvement in reliability of delivery time windows at customer locations.
   * 10-15 percent reduction in human error rates due to less need for manual entry of shipping data.
   * Elimination or early detection of theft.
   Other companies have been reluctant to participate in the Michigan State effort, and Dow hopes that the study will encourage other chemical shippers to open their doors to researchers for a second phase look at supply chain security within the industry, Ward said after his presentation.