Supply chains built purely for cost efficiency performed badly through the last five years of disruption. The correction is not to abandon efficiency — it is to decide, deliberately, where resilience is worth paying for.
Mapping exposure before redesigning
Most organizations can name their tier-one suppliers and very few can name their tier-two. That gap is where the disruptions originate. Mapping two tiers deep, even roughly, usually reveals that several “independent” suppliers share a single upstream source.
Choosing where to hold buffer
- Single-source, long-lead items justify inventory or a qualified second source.
- Commodity inputs rarely do — the market is the buffer.
- Items with a long requalification cycle need the second source approved before it is needed.
Resilience is not holding more of everything. It is holding more of the few things that stop the line.
Procurement as a planning function
Where procurement reports into planning rather than purchasing, lead-time risk tends to be priced into the schedule instead of discovered during it. That reporting line is often the single highest-leverage change available.
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