Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has warned that supply chain disruption from natural disasters, cyber attacks and state-sponsored terrorism is becoming an increasingly serious risk. His comments follow a PHP security flaw that left 32 UK government services offline while potential risks were assessed.
However, while most advice targeted individuals, it neglects the challenges organisations face in the same situation. It’s vital that business leaders also consider the same risks and determine how they can prepare for these scenarios too.
Leanne Taylor, CEO of Syspro, has cautioned that manufacturers must identify their critical dependencies and understand how disruption could affect their operations before an emergency exposes weaknesses in their supply chains.
Leanne commented: “Recent disruption has shown that a supply chain can look diversified on paper and still have a single point of failure buried two or three levels down. A manufacturer may have hundreds of suppliers but remain dependent on one component, one geography or one supplier it cannot easily replace.
“Resilience starts with understanding where those dependencies sit and what happens if something changes. Which customer orders would be affected if a supplier couldn’t deliver? What alternatives are available, and what would switching mean for costs and lead times?
“Connected operational data, combined increasingly with AI, gives manufacturers new ways to explore these questions and model different scenarios much more quickly. But AI is only as useful as the quality and context of the data underneath it. The aim is to identify potential disruption earlier, understand the impact and have enough information to act before it becomes a production problem.”
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