The Migros Group procures goods worth billions of Swiss francs globally and plays an important part in ensuring a reliable supply for the Swiss population. It does so through hundreds of thousands of procurement orders, ensuring transparent forwarding of the goods to the national distribution centres by sea freight, truck or train before these goods are then distributed to the stores.

This process is now depicted in a digital twin, which guarantees visibility of the supply chain at all times and, on top of Track & Trace, includes additional functions such as automatic calculation of CO2 emissions.

The data behind this is a valuable resource for operational risk management and for safeguarding and managing the supply chain. With your help, we want to use this wealth of data to make our supply chain more resilient. Our idea is to intelligently combine the procurement data with risk data from publicly available sources in order to detect possible disruptions as early as possible and derive appropriate measures aimed at minimizing any impact.

The aim of the challenge is for you to firstly devise a pilot system that draws on data from public sources to detect natural-catastrophe risks and political/socio-economic risks and secondly perform mapping with the data from the procurement orders. An additional alert system with possible workaround measures should complement your work.

You can use the data from the procurement orders for this challenge:

• Order data (Which orders are delivered to which port and when, onto which container ship are they loaded, at which European port do they arrive and when, and when do these orders reach the distribution centre?)
• Location data (ports)
• Tracking data of container ships

The following specific examples are designed to illustrate possible risks:

• Meteorologists are forecasting that a typhoon will hit Mumbai in three days’ time. Which orders are being delivered to the port in Mumbai during this period? What alternatives are there to sea freight ex Mumbai that will still enable the affected products to reach the national distribution centre in Switzerland on time with no supply bottlenecks (rail transport, different port, etc.)?
• Severe political unrest is expected in Ningbo in three days’ time. Which orders are being delivered to Ningbo during this period? What are the alternatives to sea freight ex Ningbo? Which orders could be affected nonetheless? What options are there for these orders?
• There is a threat of storm tides in the North Sea and the English Channel in two days’ time. Which orders (on which ships) are likely to be delayed? How long are these delays expected to last?

Other potential risks are as follows:

Natural catastrophies:

• floods
• droughts
• winds
• earthquakes
• volcanoes
• heavy snowfall

Extreme weather events impact traffic infrastructure and raw material supply.

Political/socio-economic risks:

• Strikes
• Civil unrest
• Trade embargos
• Epidemics/pandemics
• War
• Piracy
• Interruptions of trade routes (e.g. Suez channel, Rastatt tunnel closure)
• Blackout
• Hack attack
• Bad working conditions of suppliers (reputational risks)