Supply Chain Resilience for Operations Directors Training Course

Course overview

Operations directors are expected to protect service, revenue and margin when suppliers fail, transport capacity tightens, demand shifts abruptly, or a single-site disruption exposes an overlooked dependency. Yet many organisations still manage resilience through informal escalation, supplier spreadsheets and inventory buffers that are expensive but poorly targeted. This course gives operations leaders a disciplined way to identify where disruption will hurt most, set recovery priorities, and make defensible decisions on sourcing, inventory, capacity and customer allocation before a crisis forces reactive action.

Participants examine supply chain resilience as an operating-management system rather than a procurement-only issue. They learn to map multi-tier supply networks, classify critical materials and suppliers, quantify time-to-survive and time-to-recover, build disruption scenarios, and establish risk indicators that trigger action. The programme covers supplier financial and operational due diligence, dual-sourcing design, strategic inventory positioning, transport contingency, sales and operations planning alignment, and executive crisis governance. Participants also practise translating resilience choices into cost, cash, service and revenue implications for board-level decisions.

Delivery combines instructor-led models with worked supply chain cases, spreadsheet-based analysis, facilitated decision simulations and peer review. Each participant develops a practical Supply Chain Resilience Action Plan for their own operation or a supplied case, including a criticality heat map, priority risk register, scenario response playbooks, resilience investment choices and a 90-day implementation roadmap. The course is suited to leaders accountable for end-to-end operational performance who need to turn disruption lessons into repeatable controls, funded initiatives and measurable recovery capability.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Map multi-tier supplier, material, site and logistics dependencies using a supply network criticality model
• Calculate time-to-survive, time-to-recover and recovery-point priorities for critical product and service flows
• Build a supply chain risk register with likelihood, impact, detectability, ownership and escalation thresholds
• Design disruption scenarios and response playbooks for supplier failure, logistics interruption, demand shocks and cyber incidents
• Evaluate dual sourcing, nearshoring, strategic stock and capacity options using cost-to-serve and resilience trade-off analysis
• Set supplier resilience scorecards using financial, operational, geographic, cyber and business-continuity indicators
• Establish resilience KPIs, early-warning signals and executive governance routines linked to S&OP or IBP
• Produce a board-ready Supply Chain Resilience Action Plan with investment priorities and a 90-day delivery roadmap

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Operations Directors — who carry accountability for service continuity, capacity decisions and operating margin during disruption
• Supply Chain Directors — who need to convert network risk analysis into sourcing, inventory and logistics action
• Heads of Procurement — who must strengthen supplier continuity without relying solely on contract clauses
• Manufacturing or Plant Directors — who need to protect production schedules against material, component and utility disruption
• Logistics Directors — who must design transport and distribution contingencies for critical customer flows
• S&OP or IBP Leaders — who need risk scenarios and response thresholds embedded in planning decisions

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have at least three years of experience in operations, supply chain, procurement, manufacturing, logistics or planning, with exposure to supplier performance, inventory, capacity or service-level decisions. The course assumes familiarity with basic supply chain terms such as lead time, safety stock, bill of materials, supplier lead time, demand forecast and service level. Participants should be comfortable reviewing operational data in Microsoft Excel. Prior use of SAP IBP, Power BI, formal risk-management frameworks, business continuity standards or advanced statistical modelling is not required; relevant templates and calculations are taught during the programme.

Training methodology

The five-day programme uses short instructor-led briefings followed by applied analysis of a manufacturing and distribution disruption case. Participants work with supplier, inventory, lead-time, capacity and transport data in Microsoft Excel, then use facilitated workshops to map dependencies, calculate recovery measures and test response choices. Small-group simulations require participants to make allocation, sourcing and escalation decisions as conditions change. Daily outputs build toward an individual resilience action plan, which is reviewed on day five through a structured executive challenge session.

Course outline

Day 1: Resilience strategy and supply network exposure

• Supply chain resilience versus business continuity, risk management and crisis response
• End-to-end value-stream mapping from supplier tier to customer delivery
• Multi-tier dependency mapping for materials, sites, tooling and logistics lanes
• Critical product, customer and material segmentation
• Failure-mode identification across supply, production, transport and digital operations
• Risk appetite statements and resilience design principles
• Supply chain risk register structure, scoring criteria and ownership

Workshop: Participants create a dependency map and initial criticality heat map for a selected product family or the course case.

Day 2: Quantifying disruption impact and recovery requirements

• Time-to-survive calculation for inventory, capacity and customer commitments
• Time-to-recover analysis for suppliers, plants, warehouses and transport routes
• Service, revenue, margin and cash impact modelling
• Scenario design for supplier insolvency, site outage, port closure and demand surge
• Likelihood, velocity, detectability and impact scoring
• Stress testing inventory policies and replenishment assumptions
• Early-warning indicators and risk trigger thresholds

Workshop: Participants model a disruption scenario in Excel and produce a time-to-survive and time-to-recover exposure assessment.

Day 3: Supplier and sourcing resilience

• Supplier financial health and operational-capability due diligence
• Supplier resilience scorecards and evidence requirements
• Single-source, sole-source and hidden common-supplier risk
• Dual sourcing qualification and supplier switching lead times
• Nearshoring, regionalisation and supplier portfolio design
• Contractual continuity clauses, capacity reservations and information-sharing obligations
• Supplier development plans and corrective-action governance

Workshop: Participants assess a supplier portfolio, score resilience gaps and recommend sourcing and supplier-development actions.

Day 4: Resilient operations, inventory and logistics design

• Strategic safety-stock placement using decoupling points
• Inventory segmentation by criticality, substitutability and replenishment risk
• Flexible manufacturing capacity and alternate-site recovery options
• Product rationalisation and approved-material substitution controls
• Transport lane risk assessment and carrier contingency design
• Warehouse, distribution-centre and last-mile continuity measures
• Cost-to-serve trade-offs between redundancy, responsiveness and working capital

Workshop: Participants redesign a network response for a constrained supply scenario and present a justified inventory, capacity and logistics package.

Day 5: Governance, decision-making and implementation

• Embedding resilience into S&OP and integrated business planning cycles
• Executive crisis cell roles, decision rights and escalation protocols
• Customer allocation rules and ethical prioritisation during shortage
• Resilience KPIs, dashboard design and Power BI reporting concepts
• Investment appraisal for resilience initiatives and risk-reduction benefits
• ISO 22301 alignment for continuity governance and exercising
• Ninety-day implementation planning and benefits tracking

Workshop: Participants complete and defend a board-ready Supply Chain Resilience Action Plan with priorities, owners, triggers and a 90-day roadmap.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, SAP Integrated Business Planning, ISO 22301

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions