5 key steps to achieving resilience across your supply chain

Today’s global landscape is volatile and unpredictable. From unpredictable natural disasters to escalating geopolitical tensions and unforeseen emergencies, business disruptions are not only frequent, but to be expected. Supply chain disruptions can be severe, having the potential to incapacitate supply chains, leading to delays, rising costs, and dissatisfaction from customers and regulators alike. Supply chain resilience, therefore, is not just a luxury, but a necessity.   

Recent events have underscored how fragile traditional supply chains can be. Businesses that don’t take the time to prepare for supply chain threats or develop internal processes that are agile and adaptable will fall behind in reputation, profitability, and may even struggle to survive in this competitive landscape.  

Whether your business is local and small or a large, multinational enterprise, adopting a proactive approach to supply chain resilience will be the key to mitigating risks and to gaining a competitive advantage. While business leaders may not be able to predict the future, by developing supply chain resilience, their businesses will be able to handle the supply chains risks that constantly emerge.  

Step 1: Understand your supply chain and build relationships with your suppliers

As Carl Sagan famously said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” Similarly, to improve and strengthen your supply chain, you must first understand how it works. Start by mapping your supply chain, tracing all elements from raw materials to final delivery to the customer. This way you can understand where there are weak links or potential issues, from non-compliant suppliers, transportation bottlenecks, or geographic dependencies. Establish your company’s risk thresholds, categorizing and ranking potential risks, and institute regular risk assessments.  

Then, get to know your suppliers a bit more, and use this information to make educated decisions about your suppliers. Your business may need to diversify its supplier base, or take steps to ensure that your suppliers are all compliant with relevant global regulations. Or, if you find a supplier is non-compliant or unreliable, you may choose to research and find other suppliers that could better serve your supply chain needs.   

Figure 1: A balance of visibility, agility, and resiliency will in turn drive greater readiness in the wake of disruption 

Finally, establish strong partnerships with your suppliers. Open communication and trust can enable greater flexibility during crises, and can assist in joint planning and risk management strategies.   

Step 2: Invest in the right supply chain tech

Building supply chain resilience is not a manual task – it must be aided by technology. There are simply too many data points, coming from a vast amount of data streams from around the world, to keep up with and accurately analyze. Finding and implementing the right supply chain management tools and technologies is key to creating a supply chain that can weather both metaphorical and literal storms.   

There are several key areas where technology can help you create a resilient supply chain: visibility and monitoring, predictive analytics, and scenario planning. 

Supply chain visibility and monitoring tools track your value network in real-time, giving you immediate alerts when risks emerge. For example, a monitoring tool may give you a heads up that there’s a typhoon brewing on the other side of the world that may disrupt your regular shipping patterns. Receiving this alert early could give your business an early-mover advantage, allowing you to switch to another method of transportation quickly and in the most cost-effective manner. 

Figure 2: Actionable intelligence ahead of disruption is crucial to achieve supply chain resilience 

Predictive analytics crunches the massive amounts of data that are collected throughout your supply chain, providing your supply chain management team with actionable insights and notifications when potential incidents are detected. Finally, artificial intelligence and machine learning can build upon predictive analytics, giving your team the ability to simulate scenarios, helping to create robust contingency plans.  

Step 3: Optimize inventory management and contingencies

Creating a resilient supply chain also gives you the opportunity to optimize processes throughout your business. With clear data from your supply chain management visualization, you can ensure your inventory management is effective, cost-efficient, and agile. For example, your business may decide to add additional buffer stock to your inventory based on an emerging risk alert to mitigate a potential disruption or shortage. Crucially, building a resilient supply chain means that you can adjust your approach as needed, keeping your operations flexible and durable.  

Additionally, you don’t always have to make these decisions at the last minute. In fact, using this data to create strong contingency plans for common or obvious disruptions ensures that your business can get back on track quickly. 

Step 4: Embrace sustainability

Incorporating environment, sustainability, and governance (ESG) focused practices into your supply chain is not only socially responsible, but key to future-proofing your supply chain. Green practices, such as reducing carbon emissions, optimizing transportation routes, and minimizing waste, can make your supply chain more efficient and less dependent on changing resources. Furthermore, ensuring your supply chains are free from governance issues, such as modern slavery or forced labor, can enhance your brand reputation and prevent disruptions tied to unethical practices.  

Aligning your supply chain resilience with sustainability builds goodwill with consumers and other stakeholders and ensures compliance to the ever-increasing amount of green- and sustainability-focused global regulations. Businesses contribute to a better world, while positioning themselves as trusted partners in a market looking for accountability and transparency.  

Step 5: Invest in workforce development

Finally, don’t forget the key force behind your supply chain success: your skilled supply chain management team. Make sure you’re supporting them through these changes, providing them with the tools, training, and development to effectively respond to the constantly changing global landscape. Foster a culture of resilience that priorities innovation and agility in problem-solving, based on real-time data and analytics. 

Remember, while supply chain technology is an important part in building supply chain resilience, the tool is only as good as the person wielding it. Leave the advanced analytics to draw out patterns from masses of data, and empower your supply chain management team to do what they do best: make effective decisions for your business. 

Supply chain resilience may seem like a constantly moving goal – there’s no business that will fully evade delays and disruptions. However, supply chain resilience is not measured in perfect supply chains, but rather in the ability to quickly and effectively adjust where necessary, minimizing risks and consequences. Building a resilient supply chain today will pay dividends in the unpredictable business world of tomorrow.