ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses several approaches to identify potential supply-chain disruptions and methods to ensure supply continuity. A company’s opportunities for growing its business can be vulnerable to internal and/or external supply disruptions caused by a multitude of risks or crises. And the largest threat to any company is the myriad of risks or crises that could disrupt the supply from any single-sourced material or service, or catastrophic events that may disable multiple sources in the same geographic region, such as earthquakes, severe weather, political unrest and wars. One tool that is often overlooked when contingency planning for uninterrupted business continuity is the SWOT analysis. Dual-sourcing is the supply-chain management practice of using two suppliers for a given component, raw material, product, or service. Everything from natural disasters and geopolitical conflicts to material price spikes and labor shortages can impact entire supply chains, domestic and international.
