Identifying and evaluating unexpected events as sources of supply chain risk

Abstract

To address risk during Supply Chain (SC) operations, it is required to identify and address risk origins. To overcome the rigidity of probabilistic and reaction based mechanisms, focus needs to be driven within an operational field that spans outside the borders of the traditional SC. Exploring the dynamics outside the SC operational environment and identifying interconnections between unexpected events, is a step in creating a risk strategy. This paper approaches risk by considering detrimental events as risk sources, hence identifying and classifying these events is the first step to develop an information systems risk strategy. An in-depth survey was carried out in order to establish the grounds for developing a methodology to define and identify detrimental events. The survey involved both existing literature and SC practitioners, in order to expand on operational expertise. Detrimental events were classified according to their types and were mapped against the SCOR model, which incorporates international and cross organisational SC operational knowledge.