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Resilient Supply Chain

Enhance supply chain network risk management, stress test supply chain network resilience, improve agility

Building a resilient supply chain network

In the new global reality, Chief Supply Chain Officers need supply chain networks that don’t just minimize day-to-day risk but can also absorb, adapt to, and recover from catastrophic disruption whenever and wherever it strikes.

Organizations need to proactively manage risk and anticipate market changes by building resilient supply chain networks that are risk-aware, secure, transparent, adaptive, fast-moving and optimized.

Total Enterprise Reinvention

Confronted with a challenging economic landscape and disruption on multiple fronts, the need for resilience is greater than ever. This adds to pressure for broad-based transformation. As more organizations recognize the need for Total Enterprise Reinvention, new resilient supply chain networks built around a digital core will help to set new performance frontiers for their companies and the industries in which they operate. CSCOs are set on driving their supply chain reinvention despite disruption with leaders in resilience investing significantly more in AI tools, advanced analytics and automation. Only 9% of CSCOs believe that supply chain disruption will significantly decelerate their organization's reinvention strategy.

Supply Chain & Operations

Visibility delivers supply chain network resilience

Accenture shares how different types of visibility can help build resilient supply chain networks.

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Enhance your supply chain network risk management

Supply chain network resilience is about managing and adapting to the unknown across the whole spectrum of risk—from day-to-day operational risks through to catastrophic supply chain network disruptions.

Operational risk

Respond to sudden supply chain network changes with improved real-time visibility and risk identification and mitigation solutions.

Tactical risk

Adapt to evolving supply/demand with scenario planning and modeling, plus risk/opportunity analysis, as part of sales and operations planning.

Strategic risk

Manage uncertainty by boosting flexibility and capacity through network modeling and simulation, strategic buffer sizing, and multi-sourcing options.

Resilient supply chain network

Enhance your ability to adapt to and recover from major disruption by identifying points of potential failure through a Resilience Stress Test.

Supply chain network resilience quick assessment

To easily get a sense of an organization’s supply chain network resilience maturity level, complete Accenture’s Supply Chain Resilience Quick Assessment.

This quick assessment uses answers to questions across the end-to-end value chain to provide a scorecard that helps an organization understand its level of supply chain network resilience.

Third party risk management (TPRM)

More than 90% of companies say they’ve faced a disruptive incident in relation to a third party over the past three years. With volatility and disruption continuing to increase, developing and implementing an effective and holistic third-party risk management (TPRM) strategy is more important than ever. TPRM enables businesses to enhance decision-making, detect risks preemptively and remain well-positioned to manage and mitigate risk—regardless of the disruption and volatility on the horizon.

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Stress test your supply chain network resilience

A more comprehensive supply chain resilience stress test has been developed by Accenture and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to assess the operational and financial risks created by disasters or other catastrophic events.

Leveraging Accenture’s extensive expertise in supply chain, operations and analytics, and MIT’s leading research and capabilities in data science, the stress test quantifies supply chain network resilience in a single index.

Organizations are able to quickly identify potential points of supply chain network failure, assess their related financial exposure, define appropriate mitigation strategies and actions, and benchmark resilience against their peers.

Results from the stress test can help to guide optimization of supply chain operations as part of a wider strategy of Total Enterprise Reinvention. This starts with the premise that every part of every business needs to be reinvented and there is no limit to what is possible if companies are built around a digital, AI-powered core and has a tech-enabled mindset. It recognizes that technology advancements will mean that this is a continuous and dynamic need. This ongoing commitment really matters. Accenture AI Maturity research shows that companies that advance and sustain their AI maturity achieve superior growth and performance.

Resilient Supply Chain Stress Test

The  Resilience Stress Test analyzes supply chains and provides a resiliency score and dashboard to future proof business.

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Measuring supply chain network performance

By measuring a supply chain network’s performance, organizations can quantify supply chain network resilience, identify potential points of failure, define mitigation strategies, and assess the related financial exposure.

How it works

  • The supply chain resilience stress test maps a supply chain (using a digital twin) and runs disruption scenarios.
  • Each scenario is measured on key metrics and financial implications
  • The result is a supply chain risk management maturity assessment

Who benefits

  • Companies that need a recurring, data-driven risk management capability to assess supply chain network resilience
  • Organizations that want to proactively mitigate the impact of one-off events
  • Governments and regulators that are looking to assess the exposure of strategically critical industries

Case studies

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Supply Chain & Operations

A forward-looking supply chain

Accenture helped a food marketing and distribution company reimagine its supply chain management through unified view of demand forecasting.

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Software and Platforms

The Microsoft Cloud Supply Chain Control Tower

Accenture partnered with Microsoft to craft a data led transformation strategy to build an industry leading supply chain digital solution.

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DHL Supply Chain: Making digital supply chain a reality

Dr. M Voss, Global CIO and COO of DHL Supply Chain

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Supply chain & operations blogs

Reinvent and create agile supply chain networks that power enterprise value across a range of industries and markets.

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Supply Chain & Operations

Generative AI: Why smarter supply chains are here

Supply chain roles have a 43% potential for transformation through #GenAI. What will this mean for your workforce? Find guidelines for getting started.

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Supply Chain & Operations

Beware the growing digital divide in supply chains

How do we close the supply chain digital divide? Accenture’s Kris Timmermans explains what leaders do differently.

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Supply Chain & Operations

What's the true value of cloud for supply chain?

Leverage the cloud to boost supply chain resilience. Accenture’s Mansi Arora explains the true value of cloud for supply chain networks.

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Our leaders

Stéphane Crosnier

Managing Director – Strategy & Consulting, Supply Chain & Operations, Resilience Global Lead
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Jaime Lagunas

Managing Director – Applied Intelligence, Supply Chain & Operations Global Lead
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Pierre F. Kaltenbach

Senior Managing Director – Strategy & Consulting, Supply Chain & Operations, EMEA Lead
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Franz Naselli

Managing Director – Applied Intelligence, Supply Chain & Operations, Resilience Stress Test Analytics Lead
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Sunita Suryanarayan

Managing Director, North America Supply Chain & Operations, Resiliency Lead
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Anshul X. Singhal

Managing Director S&C, SC&O, Growth Markets Resilience Lead
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Frequently asked questions

Companies with resilient supply chain networks are better able to manage change to their supply chain & operations. They can flex and adapt quickly to evolving patterns of supply and demand. They use advanced data science to predict disruption and react with confidence, at speed. With these enhanced risk sensing and management capabilities, their supply chain networks are more secure, more transparent, more cost-efficient, and more attuned to the changing needs and values of individual customers.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of many global supply chain networks, particularly those that had been finetuned for efficiency and speed. It’s a key reason why proactively managing risk and boosting resilience is now top of the agenda for CSCOs across industries. The goal is to use digital connectivity and intelligent technologies to enhance the supply chain network’s ability to adapt, respond and recover from whatever unknowns arise.

To manage and mitigate risk, you first need to understand it. That’s true at every level—whether it’s the day-to-day operational risks in a single facility or the systemic risks of severe  supply chain network disruption. To help companies with this complex process, Accenture and MIT have developed a new “Stress Test” for identifying supply chain network risks, assessing the financial exposure, and defining the right response.

Accenture’s Resilience Stress Test uses an innovative approach to map a company’s entire supply chain and create a digital representation of it (called a “digital twin”). This digital twin is then used to assess the impact of various disruption scenarios. The results are consolidated into a single index that quantifies the resilience of the supply chain network as a whole.