Supply Chain Threats and Countermeasures: From Elicitation through Optimization

Abstract

There are many checklists for improving supply chain resilience under different threats, but a lack of concrete procedures to rigorously assess and select among countermeasures (CMs). We present a novel process and method to elicit the needed information to identify CMs and assess their ability to reduce risk. We report on the fine-grained analysis underlying an effective simulation developed to model both the impact of threats and the impact of alternative CMs in the information and communication technology supply chain subject to disruptions due to natural hazards. We also describe the coarse-grained descriptions needed to elicit risk reduction estimates from subject matter experts, and the problems of integrating these two approaches, bottom up, and top down, to support management decisions to choose an optimal set of CMs given a limited budget.