Using Stock, Time and Capacity Buffers to Build the World’s Most Resilient Supply Chains

by Dawid Janse van Rensburg

INTRODUCTION

Without analyzing the subject field of resilience (broader subject area is risk management) too deeply, the objective of this paper is to explain/illustrate how stock, time and capacity buffers can be used and combined to build highly resilient supply chains.

However, the context of the paper will be positioned within the subject area of risk management, seeing that resilience has to do with vulnerability of supply chains when exposed to large scale disruption, mostly external.

The paper will therefore aim to set the context for supply chain resilience (what it is), the factors that makes supply chains vulnerable, and then most importantly, how to build a resilient supply chain.

The case is made that agile supply chains almost certainly ensures a resilient supply chain, and then the author will explain how buffers are used to build agile supply chains, and therefore resilient supply chains.