AME and ISE researchers Farrokh Mistree and Janet K. Allen released a monograph containing a fail-safe supply network that is designed to mitigate the impact of variations and disruptions on people and corporations. Mistree and Allen co-direct the Systems Realizations Laboratory at OU, which focuses on collaborative research in intelligent decision-based realizations of complex social systems. Ultimately, this work is aimed at educating strategic engineers.

In this monograph, they propose a framework, develop mathematical models and provide examples of a fail-safe supply network design. This is achieved by developing a network structure to mitigate the impact of disruptions that distort the network structure and planning flow through the network to neutralize the effects of variations.

The researchers asses current thinking at different levels of management within a network. The strategy revolves around 5 elements: reliability, robustness, flexibility, structural controllability, and resilience. Organizations can use the framework presented in this monograph to manage variations and disruptions. Managers can select the best operational management strategies for their supply networks considering variations in supply and demand and identify the best network restoration strategies. The framework is generalizable to other complex engineered networks.

The monograph was published October 15^th, 2018 and is available for purchase here:

https://www.amazon.com/Architecting-Fail-Safe-Supply-Networks/dp/1138504262