Customs & Supply Chain News

BSI is Providing Complimentary Access to In-depth COVID-19 Related Supply Chain Insights and Intelligence

April 2020 – BSI, the business improvement company, announced today that they are providing open access to the COVID-19 section of their Supply Chain Risk Exposure Evaluation Network (SCREEN) tool.

SCREEN is a web-based, comprehensive global supply chain intelligence system available by subscription, which includes valuable information for companies to anticipate, quickly respond to, and avoid supply chain disruptions.

As referenced in BSI’s recently released Supply Chain Risk Insights 2020 Report, the COVID-19 outbreak has highlighted the current fragility of global supply chains, wherein the failure of one link in the chain has the potential to cause extensive disruptions throughout.

As the pandemic has progressed, causing considerable disruption to every-day life and a negative impact on the workforce, companies have had to significantly re-evaluate their supply chains. Initially this was caused by the downtime and slowed restart of Chinese manufacturing, however the continued spread of the pandemic has led to complex and varied responses by individual governments to contain the virus, creating further disruptions and requiring businesses to adopt adaptive business continuity measures.

Whether this means that restaurants are closing their dining rooms and only providing carry-out and delivery, or hospitals restricting access to anyone other than critical patients, the New Not Normal is here and the need for comprehensive business continuity planning that considers all types of potential natural disasters, including disease outbreaks, has never been more acute.

Lessons learned from the COVID-19 outbreak about how to better mitigate disease spread and absorb delays to manufacturing and global shipping will shape how organizations and supply chains are effectively able to respond to other disruptions in the future.

For this reason, BSI is providing open access to SCREEN’s COVID-19 intelligence. “These insights will allow companies to sharpen their actions in the face of this crisis, focus their business continuity plans for their recovery and have a stronger continuity plan for the future,” said Jim Yarbrough, Global Intelligence Program Manager at BSI. “Our priority is to bring the global community reliable and actionable insights and information, curated by our team of experts, around COVID-19 to protect public health and mitigate business disruption.”

To view the SCREEN COVID-19 intelligence, visit: screen.bsigroup.com/Covid19/

The Supplier Compliance Audit Network announces its support of the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism – Updated Minimum Security Criteria.

May 2019 – Newark, De.

Supplier Compliance Audit Network (SCAN) as an organization of US and Canada based importers with a common goal of facilitation of international supply chain security compliance enthusiastically endorses the efforts of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to refresh and update the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CTPAT) Minimum Security Criteria (MSC). SCAN has performed over 9000 supply chain security audits in the past 5 years and has a repository of 16000 factories locations. SCAN members participated in the Advisory Committee On Commercial Operations (COAC) that provided input and feedback during the drafting and review of new MSC. SCAN is looking forward to leading the socialization of the new MSC. SCAN intends to begin conducting audit in the 2nd half of 2019 utilizing the New MSC in an effort assess compliance lead in the completion of corrective and preventative action plans intended to prepare its members for audits and validations against these new criteria in 2020.