Supply Chain: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

1 THREE STEPS TO PREPARE YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN FOR THE NEXT CRISIS

by Christian Schuh, Wolfgang Schnellbächer, and Daniel Weise

No one can say they weren’t aware of the possibility of a global pandemic or of the numerous border disputes around the world causing increased volatility. Conflicts resulting from heightened geopolitical tensions could easily unbalance the entire semiconductor industry, but such disasters can be partially mitigated with sufficient risk monitoring.

Indeed, most of the risks that a company will face do not fall into the category of what the mathematician and philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb termed “black swan” events: random, highly improbable events that have enormous impact. A trade dispute, a viral epidemic, a product ...