یک رویکرد پیشگیرانه برای مدیریت ریسک زنجیره تامین: تغییر در سفارشات در میان تامین کنندگان برای کاهش ریسک  عرضه  A proactive approach to supply chain risk management: Shifting orders among suppliers to mitigate the  supply side risks

1. Introduction We face many risks in our daily life and consent to live with them to some level in order to survive and conduct activities. For instance, driving a car embodies the risk of accident and potential consequences of life and material loss. People accept these consequences for the sake of the driving benefits and they prefer safer cars, fasten seat belts and obey traffic rules to mitigate the probability and/or the adverse impacts of risky events. They could not simply refrain from driving their cars to avoid risks because using other transportation methods also involves some other risks. As in human life, it is impossible to survive and make money without taking risk in business life as well. Companies also must accept some degree of risk and apply risk mitigation strategies to gain a competitive advantage and make profit. For example, increasing globalization and e-trade yields lower raw material or product costs especially when procured from the Far East and provides economies of scale. However, long supply chains (SC) and intercontinental transportation are subject to numerous risks arising from communication, geopolitical, cultural, transportation or legal complexities. If one or more of these risks emerge, firms are likely to encounter much higher costs rather than the financial advantage of supplying from intercontinental instead of local suppliers. Chopra et al. (2007) show that ignoring two kinds of risk sources as disruption and supply delays not only increases the use of more unreliable and cheap suppliers but also decreases the use of reliable suppliers. For example, Schmitt and Singh (2011) have expressed that one consumer packaged goods company’s SC came to a halt due to a customs strike. When customs went on strike in a South American country, no raw materials could be shipped to their plant. While the plant had planned to carry three weeks’ worth of raw material inventory, they happened to only have one weeks’ worth on hand because additional material was in transit. Thus after a week, production shut down at that facility. This was a serious issue, as facility fixed costs and labor costs were still incurred. Only a few days’ worth of production was not shipped on time, but the total cost to the company was estimated at a million dollars. This incident shows the importance of SC continuity and planning of facilities as back up for each other. The art of risk management is not just in responding to anticipated events but in building a culture and organization that can respond to risk and withstand unanticipated events (Coleman, 2011). Most companies recognize the importance of risk assessment programs and use different methods, ranging from formal quantitative models to informal qualitative plans, to assess SC risks. However, most companies invested little time or resources for mitigating SC risks (Jianlin, 2011).