Abstract
A global supply chain links the United States and the rest of the world. Across the time, the focus has been put on reducing the costs of transport, and therefore resulted in a decrease of the ship crew, customs duty and requirements. However, Sept 11 posed a clear threat on global exchange, and required some precaution to be taken in order to ensure safe trade. In this report, we identified two major concerns in global supply chain security: theft and terrorism. Theft has been a scourge in the industry for centuries. It seems that no matter how drastic the security measures are, theft will always happen. However, the latest developments of the RFID technology are giving serious hope to carriers to reduce this issue. Most of the latest measures taken to secure the supply chain were related to the terrorist threat. The United States government has been a leader in the implementation of such measures, followed by other countries. Different initiatives are described in this report, such as Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), Operation Safe Commerce (OSC), Container Security Initiative (CSI) the Maritime Transportation Security Act, the Vehicle and Cargo Inspection System (VACIS) and the Bioterrorism Act.
