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Resilient Supply Chains use disruption specific mitigation in their design.
There has been a lot of discussion, of late, about designing Resilient Supply Chains. We should appreciate that the design is not universal, it should be context specific. The types of disruptions we anticipate should dictate the design changes required to mitigate it.
For example, if the disruption is on the demand side, the design works on either node redundancy or inventory buffers, depending on how flexible and responsive the back end operations are. If we are highly flexible, we can manage such demand disruptions through design of dynamic inventory buffers. However, if the backend is poor in flexibility as well as in responsiveness, we need to create node redundancy to maintain high levels of customer service.
Similarly, if the disruption is on the supply side, we can manage through dynamic inventory buffers, provided the procurement system is flexible and responsive. However, if we lack these two capabilities, we would need supplier redundancy.
In summary, let’s think about the types of disruptions we want to guard against, and look at our internal capabilities of sensing, flexibility and responsiveness, before designing the appropriate protective measures.