Focusing Your Actions for the Most Benefit

Looking at the simple supply chain in the preceding section, you may wonder what can possibly go wrong. Well, how about your supplier’s supplier failing to deliver components to it, and your supplier’s supplier’s supplier not delivering as well? You can go on and on in this way until you chase your components right back to their raw source, such as oil being extracted from the ground to produce shrink wrap.

But we’re keeping things simple and practical, and our focus is on getting a good return for the time you spend examining your supply chain.

Here are four key principles to bear in mind when striving to encourage the resilience of your supply chain – these measures bring the most benefit for the least effort:

Concentrate on your pre-identified key products and services and the critical activities that provide them (which is part of your Business Impact Analysis from Chapter 4).

You can only do so much with any single supplier and receive only so much reassurance. Where the activities are critical to producing your key products and services, consider a secondary supplier.

Single points of failure exist in every supply chain; those pinch points where if that supplier fails, the entire chain collapses and can go no farther. When you recognise the points of failure you can support them, giving you a second option if things go wrong.

Be prepared to reassure those that you supply, in the same way you’d expect your suppliers to reassure you.