According to a short recent article over on Supply Chain Brain on Next-Gen Supply Chains: The Transformative Role of Supply Chain Leaders in Today’s Business which quoted a GEP and Economist Study on “Next-Gen Supply Chains: The Transformative Role of Supply-Chain Leaders in Today’s Business”, 55% of enterprises anticipate a major supply chain disruption to strike at any time.

Are 45% of enterprise leaders asleep at the wheel? The chance of a disruption has been getting worse by the day for at least the last decade (if not the last two)! In 2014, Reslinc tracked almost 300 major global supply chain disruptions across natural disasters, factory explosions, labor disputes, power outages, chemical spills and geopolitical upheavals that impacted the supply chains of multiple global companies. That’s almost one major disruption a day, every day!

In 2013, at least 8 out of 10 companies had experienced a major supply chain disruption in the last two years (Supply Chain XChange). By 2014, one year later, 3 in 4 supply chain professionals admitted they experienced a chronic supply chain disruption. (APICS) Since then, natural disasters (fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc.) have increased year over year. Geopolitical conflicts, including wars, are on the rise. So are droughts, and now we have the double shipping whammy of the reduced capacity of the Panama canal part of the year and the ongoing Red Sea Crisis. We also have sanctions with unintended consequences, power shifting to the BRICs, world class pandemics, and a country Big X Consultancies made us 100% dependent on willing to shut down entire cities at a moment notice on an impossible zero-tolerance policy. We’re literally at the point where every company has an almost 100% chance of experiencing a considerable disruption in the next 12 months.

So I ask again, are 45% of enterprise executives asleep at the wheel?