Contingent Strategies for Mitigating Supply Disruptions With Backup Supplier and Information Acquirement

1. Introduction

The large number of well-publicized supply-chain disruptions in recent years has heightened awareness of the significant risks posed by supply failure and the need for effective disruption-management strategies. Extreme weather disasters continued deterioration of the global environment brought about and political conflicts caused by man-made terrorist incidents often occur, which have brought tremendous shock for normal operations of many companies. In 2000, lightning fire in Philips's semiconductor plant lead to the Ericsson and Nokia's supply disruptions for several weeks. In 2011, Japanese Fukushima earthquake caused automobile enterprises such as Honda Nissan suspend production. In a decade, unexpected events frequently occur in China, e.g. the south area of frozen disaster and the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, the Yushu earthquake in 2010, the Yunnan earthquake in 2014, Shanghai Husi food safety accident. Under the complicated and changeable environment, the characteristics of cross-regional and multi-link among supply chain participants make the supply chain easily influenced by many unexpected events from the external environment and internal system, resulting in supply disruption.