Organizations that are able to address such issues proactively will see the highest return on risk management spending, since the best way to avoid a supply chain disruption is to anticipate it ahead of time. There are two possible approaches to averting these future problems. Companies may hire dedicated persons with these skills within the enterprise, or they can retain an outside consulting firm that provides knowledge process outsourcing, or KPO services for the capabilities listed above. Unlike the more common practice of outsourcing relatively low-skilled jobs, KPO outsourcing covers more advanced, specialized work.

Regardless of whether companies outsource this work or keep it in-house, however, they must seek out people who have expertise in multiple areas, including statistical modeling, optimization algorithms for supply chain planning, analytics and data cleansing, as well as an understanding of how to apply these technologies to supply chain management. Such a set of skills may be hard for a company to recruit and retain. In addition, these skills are very specialized and probably cannot be found in one person.

Supply chain consulting organizations with KPO capabilities that can bring sophisticated technical expertise offer a good alternative to hiring a dedicated staff. Working closely with the demand planning team, these consultants can continuously assess the existing statistical models and refine them to ensure highest performance on forecast accuracy. Since these resources work with any given client for a half or one third of their weekly hours, the client gets the benefit of such skills at a lower cost and on-demand.

In addition to providing expertise in the specific supply chain technologies such as statistical modeling or optimization algorithms, consultants or in-house workers are also needed to provide many decision-support services, such as supply chain exception processing, insightful analytics and continuous data cleansing. These services ensure that supply chain planners are spending the majority of their time on more high value tasks, while the tedious day-to-day task of exception processing and data cleansing can be managed by a dedicated staff.

While companies often set themselves up as lean geographically-dispersed operations to remain competitive, that same structure can leave them particularly vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. In today's ultra-competitive business climate, even little blips in normal supply chain functions can have serious consequences. It may be hard to comprehend how a company's current supply chain management system, which was designed to anticipate and avert risk may end up being a source of risk. But unless these systems are continuously optimized by skilled staff, they will be of little use in helping a company navigate a supply chain disruption.

By taking a deeper view of their current systems and ensuring that they have the capability to continuously leverage advanced analytics and optimize statistical/optimization models, they can reduce their risk and reap sustainable benefits, so that they are ready to respond to those unfortunate, but inevitable events that disrupt the flow of raw materials and finished products.

About the author: Jessie Chimni is vice president of North America Consulting Services for Bristlecone, a supply chain consulting firm. Bristlecone brings expertise across the entire spectrum of supply chain including demand planning, supply planning, network collaboration, sourcing and analytics. Bristlecone also provides supply chain-focused KPO services.