The Development of Risk Assessments and Supplier Resilience Models for Military Industrial Supply Chains Considering Rare Disruptions

Background: Supply chain risk and resilience in non-profit-seeking industries involving governmental agencies and quasi-governmental agencies have been under-studied. This paper focuses on the military industrial supply chain to demonstrate the development of risk assessment and supplier resilience models considering one-off disruption events such as the COVID-19 disruption. Methods: We establish relevant resilience-based categories through a literature review, supported by the experiences of supply chain experts within the military industry. We quantify the severity of the identified resilience categories, their detectability, and their occurrence probabilities. The failure modes and effects analysis technique is used to evaluate the risk priorities for the resilience categories to develop a risk assessment model. The risk assessment model is then extended to a supplier resilience model by incorporating specific rare disruption factors, which can act as a scenario planning tool. Results: It is found that (i) the top four resilience sub-categories are financial, topical data, business continuity planning, and supply chain mapping, while cost reduction strategies and green material usage are the least important; (ii) the main areas requiring focus are topical data, supply chain depth awareness, business continuity management, and internal risk management; and (iii) suppliers have least resilience in the areas of ‘topical information’ and ‘business continuity strategy’. Conclusions: The tool developed can help military industrial supply chains identify the main areas to enhance resilience from multiple perspectives of severity, occurrence probability, detectability, and suppliers.