Mitigating maritime disruptions: Evidence from the Australian-Indonesian wheat supply chain

Maritime operations have global interface functions connecting supply chain networks on a transportation and distribution platform of international, regional, and domestic trade. These maritime operations have the potential capability to generate wide-scale disruptive effects to other tiers in the supply chain. This paper explains the many categories of risks, which may arise from natural disasters, strikes, interruptions of maritime services including terrorists, economic disruptions, infrastructure and inland accessibility, all of which may create disruptions in supply chains. Through an analysis of data collected from a telephone survey of wheat exporters and importers in Australia and Indonesia, factors causing maritime disruptions in wheat supply chains in these countries are identified. In addition, the findings from the survey also shed light on various effective strategies that mitigate the maritime disruption risks. Based on the analysis results and relevant literature, the paper then discusses the implications for the implementation of management systems intended to cope with maritime disruption risks.