Supply Chain Management Best Practices, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 12Risk Management: What to Do When Absolutely Nothing Goes According to Plan

Flashpoints

• An effective supply chain risk management plan requires a strategic view of your operations as well as that of your supply chain partners.
• Risk management contingency programs can help substantially reduce the impact of supply chain disruptions.
• As supply chain technologies advance, so too do the number of cybersecurity breaches.
• Supply chain disruptions often prompt companies to adopt best practices and enabling technologies sooner than they might have otherwise planned.

Every year, almost like clockwork, an unpredictable catastrophe will strike somewhere in the world and put supply chains throughout the world to the ultimate test. Usually it's some kind of natural disaster—tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and the like. Sometimes they're man-made, such as acts of terrorism or sabotage. And sometimes they're the result of contagion, such as SARS, swine flu, and COVID-19. Whatever crisis might be dominating the news at the time you're reading this book (and at this writing, COVID-19 is still very much an active concern), none of these events could be foreseen, and yet not only reputations and businesses but in fact the lives and livelihoods of thousands, sometimes millions of people or more are affected. And that places a lot of burden on supply chain professionals to somehow figure out a way to respond promptly and decisively to something totally unexpected. ...