Which suppliers and inputs are essential to your most important services? You examine those dependencies and decide where alternatives or stock are needed. The result is a list of the most critical dependencies and options for continuing when a supplier fails.
Identify the suppliers and inputs needed to keep one area operating. Your supplier register records the impact of disruption, available alternatives and lead times. Select measures for purchasing and operational teams to take forward.
In the course case, a supplier is unavailable for four weeks. Stock lasts two weeks and qualifying a replacement takes three. Calculate stock, reduced demand and replacement supply week by week to see whether a supply gap remains.
What you will work on
You define the suppliers and upstream inputs that are critical to continuity using traceable criteria and justify the selection.
You assess dependencies by impact of failure, recovery time and availability of alternatives, and set priorities.
You track stock while a substitute supplier is being qualified.
Who it is for
Purchasing and supplier management
Business continuity management
Risk management and operations control
Topics
Criticality of services and suppliers rather than blanket ABC classification
Multi-tier dependency analysis: concentration, switching costs and shared upstream inputs
Assessing impact of failure, maximum tolerable outage and recovery requirements
Continuity options: second source, stock, substitution, contractual safeguards and an explicit residual-risk decision
Alignment between purchasing, business units and the crisis management function, including escalation thresholds
Maintaining and reviewing the register when suppliers, volumes or service requirements change
Your result
Your supplier register records critical inputs and alternatives. Your calculation shows how long stock lasts and whether a gap remains before replacement supply.
Prerequisites
Experience in purchasing, supplier management, business continuity or operations control, and access to supplier, service and contract information for a defined area. Where reliable data are unavailable or the area is confidential, you work on a structured substitute case with comparable dependencies.
Format and approach
Planned as 4–5 hours of self-study. You build your register step by step and use self-checks to revise your work.
A component is in stock for only eight more weeks. A second supplier needs twelve weeks to qualify and sources its input from the same region. Assess what action is needed before a potential shortage and whether the substitute actually reduces the dependency.
What needs to recover first after a disruption? You examine the services in an area and explain the recovery order to colleagues in operations, IT and finance. You create a business impact analysis for your organisation or a course case.
Which service must your organisation sustain under pressure? Examine what that service depends on, what preparations already exist and where improvements are needed. Develop a resilience diagnosis, a 90-day plan for your area and a brief for the next management decision.
