Cross-border and Multi-modal Cold Chain Risk Assessment: Applying FMECA on a new Thai-Laos route

Cross-border multi-modal and railway transportation often faces different risks and problems creating delays, sometimes driven by technical or administrative discontents between countries. For cold supply chains, the risks of such delays get even more important to understand and handle, due to the perishable characteristics of the goods. While some previous research has dealt with risk assessment of either cold supply chains or railway transportation, none seems to have combined those and the issue of cross-border transportation. To address this research gap, we first review related literature and identify what risks previously have been discussed in the different fields. To empirically explore this in practice, we also identify and assess the risk factors occurring for cold supply chains using a new cross-border railway route between Thailand and Laos. The risk assessment used a Failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA) methodology to analyze risks from both previous literature and expert's suggestion. The result showed that quality and safety in uncertain situations was first concerned. The study contributes by pointing out previous gaps in research, especially related to combining the important areas of cross-border transport, multi-modal railway transport and cold supply chain. Those three aspects are all important to handle growing trade of food in a sustainable and safe way. The study thus not only identifies important general risks, but also applies this practically. Finally, we outline issues for future research.