Shipping losses worldwide have declined by 50 percent over the past decade, but 75 ships were lost in 2014, according to a recent study.

Drop a pebble into a fishpond and it creates a tiny ripple. What starts as a local event instantly surges outward, causing a ring of disturbance that grows as it travels across the water. Beneath the surface, the goldfish scatter as a mallard above beats a rapid retreat. And for those who may be dozing on the shoreline, a chain of events has begun that forces change in every direction.

Analyst Insight: In 2010, as we began to offer a supply chain risk management class at Lehigh, our body of knowledge continued to expand and migrated into a very effective methodology to review, evaluate and benchmark a company's end-to-end supply chain maturity and inherent risk. The methodology encompassed 100 questions-of-discovery across 10 tenets of the supply chain resulting in a Red, Yellow & Green "spider diagram" profile of a company's supply chain maturity and inherent risk. – Gregory L. Schlegel, Founder, The Supply Chain Risk Management Consortium, and Adjunct Professor, Supply Chain Risk Management, Lehigh University

In the late 1680s, a group of ship owners, merchants and ships' captains - in essence, the supply chain managers of the day - transformed global commerce by "inventing" business insurance. In 2015, the insurance industry will return the favor by supporting supply chain innovation through sharing the tools that insurers have depended on to predict and quantify risk. How and why (now) will that happen? And what do supply chain stakeholders need to do?

Analyst Insight: There is now a false sense of security in supply chain risk management. Sixty-eight percent of companies believe they are better prepared than five years ago, yet supply chains experience an average of three material disruptions a year, according to Supply Chain Insights. Supply chain preparedness is for standard risk factors, such as financial viability, natural disasters, product quality, globalization and outsourcing. But, what about other risks and the security of supply chain? – Mickey North Rizza, VP Strategic Services, BravoSolution

Analyst Insight: In 2009, Dr. Robert Trent, Lehigh Supply Chain Management Department Chair, and I began to discuss supply chain risk in terms of how it was negatively impacting companies around the world. This dialogue led to capturing as much information available on the subject, codifying, classifying and developing a framework which became a graduate class in supply chain risk management and ultimately a new book, just launched, entitled Supply Chain Risk Management: An Emerging Discipline. – Gregory L. Schlegel, Founder, The Supply Chain Risk Management Consortium, and Adjunct Professor, Supply Chain Risk Management, Lehigh University

Analyst Insight: In optimizing their global supply chains, companies focus on quality, cost and service metrics and trying to maximize return on their investments in supply chain projects. What is often overlooked is the major impact that supply chains have on intangible capital of a company – its corporate reputation. – Viktoria Sadlovska, Research Director at Reputation Institute

Analyst Insight: The complexity of modern supply chains introduces a wide variety of risks into business operations. Supply chain professionals primarily worry about logistics and planning challenges, but a host of legal exposures can come into play as well. The management of these vendor risks typically falls to legal and compliance stakeholders, but ultimately impacts supply chain activities. This creates a unique need for integration between solutions supporting risk and supply chain management. – David Houlihan, Principal Analyst at Blue Hill Research