The Symposium of Risk Management and Business Intelligence 2022 was held on Saturday 26 March 2022 online. The annual Symposium serves as a platform for industry professionals to exchange pioneering ideas and allows students to gain valuable insights and the latest trends in risk management and business intelligence. This year, the theme of the Symposium is “Global Supply Chains at Stake: Disruption, Risks and Opportunities”. During the post-pandemic period, the logistics industry is facing new challenges, this year’s Symposium hosted executives in different fields to address the topic of the global supply chain.

At the start of the event, Professor Kar Yan TAM, Dean and Chair Professor of Business and Management and Professor Ki Ling CHEUNG, RMBI Program Director both gave opening remarks. Professor Tam stressed the importance of risk management under the effects of Covid-19 and how to deal with global supply chain disruption due to the pandemic. Professor Cheung pointed out how the pandemic has impacted employment and supply chains, citing that the shortage of critical raw materials and components ranked number one and number two respectively as the top supply chain risks.

The first speaker of the day was Dr. Patrick LAU, Deputy Executive Director of Hong Kong Trade Development Council. Dr. Lau spoke on the topic of “New Paradigm in Supply Chain requiring Business Transformation to capture New Opportunities”.  Dr. Lau started by citing the figures of container sea freight rated from China to Northern Europe and showed that the figures have been continuously rising since 2021. Dr. Lau then pointed out that there is a perfect storm affecting all over the world as there are trade conflicts like the Xinjiang cotton and Geopolitical tensions, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Inflation cycle and so on. Dr. Lau continued to illustrate the trend that the HKTDC Export Index reveals a pessimistic trade backdrop since the second quarter of 2021. From a survey, we can see that the biggest threat to export performance over the next six months is Covid-19 persistence, stuttering economic recovery, continued disclosure of borders, increased transportation cost, China-US trade tensions and so on. In order to minimize the impact from this perfect storm, Dr. Lau pointed out 4 solutions, which are redesigning sourcing bases, multimodal transportations, embracing digitalization, capturing new Opportunities from National 14th Five-year Plan and regionalisation as the centre of economic gravity shifts to Asia.  

The second speaker was Mrs. Vivian CHEUNG, Executive Director, Airport Operations of Airport Authority Hong Kong. Mrs. Cheung spoke on the topic of “Airport Risk and Crisis Management”. Mrs. Cheung started by introducing the target of the Hong Kong Airport is to transform “City Airport” to “Airport City”. To achieve this goal, Mrs. Cheung believed that we have to ensure that there are enough runways and capacities to capture the market in Greater-Bay Area, to invest in technology and innovations for services to improve the airport efficiency, and training on air cargo leadership. Mrs. Cheung continued to introduce the Smart Airport under a 10-year roadmap to transform the Hong Kong International Airport into the next generation of smart airport, which includes the implementation of seamless business collaboration, autonomous airport operations, sustainable airport city and personalized end-to-end experience. To diversify the business of the airport, Mrs. Cheung also introduced a new landmark called SKYCITY that comprises retail complexes, dining areas, hotels, entertainment facilities and offices and a new regional training centre to attract students from all over the world to join the industry. Then Mrs. Cheung talked about crisis management, she mentioned that the major risk for airport management are operations, services and business risks. To monitor these risks, HKIA has complied with different regulations and followed a strict risk and crisis management framework. Then Mrs. Cheung mentioned some of the accidents that happened in the HKIA to illustrate the importance of crisis and media management when the crisis happened. 

 
The third speaker was Mr. Wilkie WONG, Managing Director, Group Finance and Logistics of Esquel Group. Mr. Wong spoke on the topic “Managing Supply Chain Chaos in the Time of Uncertainty”. Mr. Wong began by introducing the products and operations of the Esquel Group, and the globalized supply chains in the apparel industry. Mr. Wong pointed out that some companies are getting caught in the battle of the Titans in which there are disruptions for different areas including government sanctions, customer’s internal compliance, administrative disruptions, social media/NGO pressure and parallel supply chains. Then Mr. Wong demonstrated the success of its company in dealing with the sudden disruptions caused by the Covid-19 by scaling down some manufacturing operations and boosting entrepreneurial spirit and employee engagement to pursue new opportunities. Then Mr. Wong continued to talk about how end-to-end digital solutions could apply to the apparel industry from pre-development, materials, design, production, marketing & selling and traceability. Also, Mr. Wong showed some of the company’s projects that emphasized the architecture and the environment.  

 
The final speaker of the event was Mr. Samuel LAU, Deputy Managing Director – Integrated Logistics of Kerry Logistics. Mr. Lau spoke on the topic of “Capturing the Opportunities under the Global Supply Chain Disruptions – 3PL”. Mr. Lau first started by introducing the Global Freight Forwarding Case, which are primarily caused by the pandemic, Suez Canel Obstruction and Russo-Ukrainian War. Mr. Lau also pointed out some major disruptions at the destinations as there are nearly 50% drop in the productivity of the destination handling capacity due to manpower shortage, delays on unloading from the carrier and the haulage to consignees, additional process requiring for disinfection procedures at the port and shortage of containers. Mr. Lau continued to talk about the response to the supply chain crisis by the dispersion of the inventories in China and decentralized the warehouses and the introduction of rail/road cross-border solutions. After that, Mr. Lau introduced the Domestic E-Commerce Case. The number of pick-up locations has greatly increased in recent years which enhanced Hong Kong’s total pick-up capacity. Mr. Lau then mentioned different service lines of its business, including HKTV mall, Zeek, Cool express and the partnership with the SF Express that deliver a variety of services to Hong Kong citizens. 

 
For the final session, Professor Cheung delivered some final remarks to conclude the Symposium and thanked the speakers for bringing new perspectives, thoughts and inspirations to the event and audience members. Overall, the 13th RMBI Symposium 2022 had been a success and a valuable learning experience. 

NG Wing Sea, Otto, Year 3 in Risk Management and Business Intelligence (Class of 2023)