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How to secure what you can't see; the importance of securing your global supply chain is obvious. What is less obvious is how to do so consistently and effectively. Blueprinting your processes can help.

Article Excerpt
We all know that a company's global supply chain is a potent strategic weapon, economically speaking. Unfortunately, it can also be a potentially fatal area of vulnerability. Consider the hundreds of millions of shipping containers that move among the world's seaports--about 80 percent of the world's cargo, which adds up to 5.8 billion tons per year--and you can see that there is a lot of room for error. Cargo could be lost, stolen, or most alarmingly, compromised by terrorists.

Securing the global trade lanes is a complex business problem that doesn't admit simple answers. The ports of the United States can't possibly inspect every one of the 7 million containers they handle each year, and with 200 million containers shipped globally each year, the ports of the world won't be inspecting 100 percent of their shipments either.

Why companies must secure their supply chains is obvious: As one senior executive of a Fortune 50 company said, "If an act of terrorism were committed using one of our containers, we believe it would be a company-ending event." How they should do so is much trickier.

Companies have two often-conflicting objectives: First, to get stuff through their supply chain...