Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has selected Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor) to assess and rank security risk for countries in its global supply chain. The Supply Risk Monitoring (SRM) service was introduced as a requirement to Wal-Mart's supplier community in January 2008.

Under the agreement Stratfor will provide Wal-Mart with a comprehensive supply chain security risk monitoring service whereby countries within Wal-Mart's supply chain are ranked as high, medium or low for risks associated with the supply chain infrastructure. Using a unique analytical methodology Stratfor will monitor and evaluate countries based on risks from terrorism,insurrection, crime, the political and regulatory environment, natural disasters,as well as several other factors related to supply chain infrastructure to produce a quantifiable measure of the actual risk to a nation's supply chain.

Wal-Mart will use the country risk rankings and associated Stratfor analysis as the basis for determining appropriate supply chain security counter-measures and to provide early warning of emerging threats that could disrupt deliveries of goods to major markets around the world.

George Friedman, founder and CEO of Stratfor, said that "Working with Wal-Mart is a great honor and responsibility for Stratfor. We believe our supply risk monitor tool will enable Wal-Mart to better evaluate the security risk levels of countries it deals with in its supply chain."

Friedman added that, "Businesses in multiple industries rely on global supply chains of increasing complexity and often no small degree of vulnerability. We developed the SRM offering to help these businesses better leverage the extensive network we have developed across the globe that supports our daily analytical and periodic forecasting efforts."

(Source: Manufacturing Business Technology)