Purpose -There is significant anecdotal evidence of increasing global supply chain fragility; and, for this reason, robustness and operational sustainability are of notable concern to senior executives. Though the issues are myriad, four factors dominate these concerns: increasing complexity of products, processes, and technologies, increasing structural complexity of supply chains, increasing diversity and global nature of business systems, and the environmental costs and impacts of extended supply chains. This paper aims to focus on these factors. Design/methodology/approach -This conceptual, theoretical paper differentiates corporate sustainability and operational robustness in terms of profitability and costs, then defines and develops internal, external, and uncontrollable fragility factors. A process that measures and integrates these factors is proposed for brainstorming and decision making. Additionally, methods to represent and compare alternatives, progress against internal or external targets, and industry goals or known competitor values are offered. Findings -This study describes and demonstrates an easy-to-implement process to address the potentially disastrous consequences of supply chain fragility.Practical implications -This study offers both academicians and practitioners a model to research, assess, and identify the risks and costs of current levels of supply chain fragility and to weigh various solutions. Originality/value -Unfortunately, few research efforts define these issues or identify the associated risks. Further, little has been put forward to posit, model, and facilitate the practical decision process to address these factor relationships. To these ends, the paper proposes a "fragility index" to help supply chain managers assess sources and potential costs of fragility, sustainability, and the associated environmental stress in their supply chains.
Work has been done on the adaptation of an electrical probe, developed by Neal'°) for the measurement of local void fractions in mercury-nitrogen flow, to air-water flow. The adaptation is more difficult because of wetting of the probe by water. Various probe shapes and filming agents were employed without great success. Some improvement was obtained by means of a separate triggering circuit, but the calculated void fraction was still somewhat low compared with that measured by the gamina-ray-attenuation technique. Presumably, this is due to a finite response time of the probe, associated with the wetting of the tip; hence, further development of this technique is necessary.
In this work a resistivity probe for local property measurements, developed originally(1, 2, 3) for (non‐wetting) mercury‐nitrogen flows, was adapted to a broader class of gas‐liquid flows, such as air‐water. To compensate for the non‐negligible dry‐out time of the probe in aqueous systems, a trigger circuit was installed to sense bubble arrival rapidly. Another problem which was solved was the greater tendency for bubbles in water, as compared to mercury, to deflect away from the probe. The probe signal is an instantaneous record of the arrival and departure of bubbles at any point in the flow, and hence is well‐adapted to auto and cross‐correlation measurements, as well as distribution function studies.
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