Are you good or great?

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the March-April 2024 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

March-April 2024

Part of any supply chain manager’s job is risk mitigation. Thanks to COVID-19 and the ensuing, and constant, disruptions that have followed, more companies are now focused on reducing their exposure to supply chain chaos. We’ve heard a lot about diversification in recent years—having multiple suppliers in multiple locations. But risk mitigation goes far beyond diversification, and the recent case of Boeing should serve as a cautionary tale not to avoid those other risks.

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Part of any supply chain manager’s job is risk mitigation. Thanks to COVID-19 and the ensuing, and constant, disruptions that have followed, more companies are now focused on reducing their exposure to supply chain chaos. We’ve heard a lot about diversification in recent years—having multiple suppliers in multiple locations. But risk mitigation goes far beyond diversification, and the recent case of Boeing should serve as a cautionary tale not to avoid those other risks.

You are probably familiar with the incident I am referring, but for those that are not, here is a summary. On Jan. 17, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplane lost a door plug in midflight. A door plug is used to cover up a door opening in the fuselage as not all doors are used in all plane configurations. The door plug was produced by a third-party company, Spirit AeroSystems, at a plant in Malaysia.

Imagine being on a flight when part of the plane’s wall disappears, as this one did. U.S. government officials are investigating. “This investigation needs to find out where the mistake was, what caused this accident, and critically what needs to be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), said in a statement.

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