Businesses of all sizes have a supply chain that they rely on for the successful continuation of their business. For some companies, the supply chain keeps their production line operating by providing just in time delivery of component parts, pick-up of finished parts and off-site storage or parts and materials. For others, their supply chain may not be as obvious to the business. For companies that rely on partners or other businesses to provide information or deliverables that the company uses to produce the final design or report, these providers are part of the company’s supply chain.
Does your company outsource the provisioning of services, such as finance, Human Resources or auditing? These could also be considered part of your supply chain. Some of the companies providing these services may be smaller and less resilient to a disruption to their business.
In order to manage the risks to your company from your supply chain, you need to understand your organization’s activities and processes.
· The critical functions and activities should be identified.
· The impact to the company that a loss of a supplier may have.
· The risks that could impact the supplier.
Once all of this information has been gathered, then you can start to mitigate the risks to your business that could occur due to a supply chain problem.
The loss of a supplier is a major risk today as more business functions are outsourced. It is necessary to validate the supplier’s recovery capability before committing all of your activities to any one supplier.
