Supply Chain failures cause Serious Damage

 Supply Chain failures cause Serious Damage

Like a heart-attack victim felled by poor circulation, companies who suffer a sudden blockage in their flow of products to consumers face a long road to recovery, says Vinod Singhal, professor of operations management at Georgia Tech College of Management.

“Disruptions in the supply chain devastate corporate performance,” says Singhal, who recently conducted several related studies of supply-chain failure in collaboration with Kevin Hendricks, associate professor of operations management at the University of Western Ontario. Their research shows that disruptions do long-lasting damage to companies’ stock prices and profitability and need to be more thoroughly addressed by Business Continuity planners

“Firms continue to operate for at least two years at a lower performance level after experiencing a disruption,” says Singhal, whose study, “An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Supply-Chain Disruptions on Long-Run Stock Price Performance and Risk of the Firm,” appears in the latest issue of Production and Operations Management. “It does not matter who caused the business continuity disruption, what the reason for the disruption was, what industry a firm belongs to, or when the disruption happened.”

Supply-chain disruptions are on the rise in many industries, partly because of the growing reliance on overseas’ suppliers for components, Singhal says. For example, when Motorola introduced its first camera phone in late 2003, the company couldn’t acquire enough lenses and chipsets to meet demand for the hot product. Sony, Boeing, Hershey, Nike and Cisco are just a handful of other big companies hurt by disruptions in recent years. Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to the ill effects of disruptions because they’re focused on fewer products and wield less clout with supply-chain partners, Singhal says.

Though sometimes the unpredictable result of disasters like earthquakes or terrorist acts, supply-chain disruptions often could be prevented by better risk management, he says. Symptoms of an impending disruption are usually evident well in advance, he notes. “As with a heart attack, companies suddenly feel a lot of pain, but there have long been plenty of indications that they’re not doing so well,” he says. “If the companies involved had planned better, the disruption could have been avoided.”

Singhal and Hendricks’ research shows that in the year leading up to the disruption, firms on average experience a 107 percent decrease in operating income, 7 percent lower sales growth, and an 11 percent growth in cost. They suffer 33 to 40 percent lower stock returns (relative to their industry benchmarks) over a three-year period, starting one year before and ending two years after the announcement of the disruption. Share-price volatility rises by 13.5 percent in the year after a disruption.

“Although it seems obvious that a supply-chain glitch would affect profitability, little has been done to measure the fallout,” says Singhal, who analyzed more than 800 supply-chain disruptions that were publicly announced from 1989 to 2000. “We were very surprised by how much impact disruptions make.”

Overemphasis on cost cutting has removed too much slack from supply chains, increasing the incidence of broken links, says Singhal, whose study, “Association between Supply Chain Glitches and Operating Performance” is due for publication later this year in the journal Management Science. “While efficient and lean supply chains are desirable objectives, they should not come at the expense of reliability and responsiveness,” he says.

Executives should pay more attention to supply-chain issues because heightened scrutiny of corporate governance has made them more directly responsible for earnings forecasts, Singhal says. He recommends that they build more flexibility into the supply chain, increase the accuracy of demand forecasts, improve their risk-management strategies, and invest in available technologies that can provide early-warning of supply problems, among other steps.

Forum Statistic

•  Fewer than 20% of Global 2000  companies (2007)work with their Key Supply Chain Partners to embed BCM and even fewer (7%) regularly include partners in Exercises and Rehearsals despite the knowledge of the risks.

  Forum Comment

  As can be seen including key aspects of the Supply Chain really is a vital component of the BIA if BCM is to maximise its benefits to the organisation and deliver an even greater return on the investment made. The instances above clearly show that BCM measures can have a huge effect on the profitability and success of an organisation even when things are apparently going well. Too often BCM is seen as a 'disaster' or crisis response rather than a core business practice, yet as can be seen by overly focussing on the emergency dimensions of the BCM process opportunities to gain commercial advantage from organisational resilience are overlooked with clear consequences for the bottom line.

  We urge all organisations to examine their critical dependencies (through an iterative BIA) regularly and certainly for all major projects, not just with regard to infrastructure, but including major product developments focussing on the impact of Supply Chain disruption.

  By addressing these issues we believe that BCM professionals could dramatically increase the value of their contribution to the organisation in purely commercial terms and help realign the benefits associated with Continuity and Resilience practices.

  It is hard enough to succeed in business today, but these examples show that still far too many companies are snatching failure from the jaws of success because of a lack of thoroughness or attention on key aspects of the BCM process and when you consider the amounts often involved we certainly wouldn’t want to explain it to the board!

  If you have any comments on this article or would like to find out more about the work of the Continuity Forum please contact Sara McKenna or Russell at the Continuity Forum directly on 020 8993 1599 or info@continuityforum.org

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