The supply chain and business continuity management

New research published by the Business Continuity Institute and supported by Zurich Insurance reveals that manufacturing is being hardest hit by supply chain failure. Manufacturers have reported a 58 percent increase in disruption to their supply chains over the last 12 months; this compares to 35 percent across all industry sectors. 201 organizations across all sectors and industries responded to the survey

The objective of the research was to understand levels of supply chain disruption being experienced, the impact of the disruption and what organizations were doing to tackle the problem and, in particular, the extent to which business continuity management is being used to deal with the impact of such disruption.

A leading cause of the disruption has been the financial failure of suppliers but failure of IT and telecom system suppliers and disruption through adverse weather events have taken their toll as well. The main impact for manufacturing has been delayed product availability, with loss of revenue and productivity compounding the problem. In terms of tackling supply chain vulnerabilities, manufacturers have also recorded that they find it much harder to get their supply chain to meet their business continuity needs compared with other sectors such as the financial services sector.

The research also revealed that businesses with off-shore suppliers and outsourcers experienced above average levels of disruption; while international businesses with operations in Middle East, Africa and Latin America reported significantly higher levels of disruption and increased occurrences of contract suspension through force majeure invocations.

A summary of the research is available to download from here: http://www.thebci.org/supplychainsummary.pdf

•Date: 29th Oct 2009• Region: World •Type: Article •Topic: BC statistics
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