Supply chain disruptions up 88% in 2021 with factory fires taking top spot, contributing to record-breaking supply shortages
New date released from Resilinc, a supply chain risk monitoring and mapping solution company, indicates that factory fires, mergers & acquisitions, business sales, factory disruptions, leadership transitions, and supply shortages ranked as the top 6 supply chain disruptions in 2021.
The data, compiled from Resilinc’s EventWatchAI monitoring database reveals that supply chain disruptions were up 88% year-over-year, with 90% of disruptive events being human-caused.
2021 saw the most factory fires ever recorded in a single year. The data also reveals that disruptions due to Supply Shortages increased 452% year-over-year, this is the largest increase across all the event types Resilinc monitors for.
Resilinc sent out 1,946 Factory Fire alerts, an increase of 129% year-over-year. The uptick is due mostly to gaps in regulatory and process execution as well as a shortage of skilled labor in warehouses. They also sent out 491 alerts regarding Supply Shortages (short supply of semiconductor chips, plastics, paper, and raw materials are all examples). This type of disruption ranked 6th in terms of most reported events (behind Leadership Transition).
Supply Shortages are driving consolidations, mergers, and business sales as companies look to give a quick cash boost to the core business or optimize the supply chain to best serve the customer base.
While Human Health disruptions - which include COVID-19 related lockdowns and restrictions - fell 68% year-over-year, Resilinc has continued to designate the event as “severe.” It’s the first time in the company’s history ranking an event at that level of impact.
Additional data shows:
- Labor Disruption events increased 156% year-over-year
- Extreme Weather events increased 130% year-over-year
- Cyber Attack events increased 143% year-over-year
In total in 2021, Resilinc sent out 11,642 alerts about potential supply chain disruptions to its customers - which include today’s largest multinational organizations: that’s an 88% increase over 2020. Of these potential disruptions 7,025, or 60%, were impactful enough to trigger the creation of a WarRoom—virtual platforms in the Resilinc dashboard where customers and their suppliers communicate and collaborate to assess and resolve disruptions.
In 2021, WarRoom creation was up 105% year-over-year due mostly to pandemic, labor, and supply shortage disruptions pushing supply chain teams to develop contingency plans, including finding alternate suppliers.
Additional data revealed in the report includes the number of disruptions by region: North America experienced the most supply chain disruptions (5,417), followed by Europe (2,838), and Asia (2,128).
Resilinc’s data is gathered from the company’s EventWatchAI, a 24/7 global event monitoring service that contextualizes and analyzes more than 1.7 billion news feeds about potential and existing supply chain disruptions from approximately 4.7 million sources in 108 languages, including daily news, government regulatory reports, and social media.
EventWatchAI is part of Resilinc’s mission to integrate AI technology and machine learning with supply chain risk management, bringing predictive supply chain visibility and resiliency to customers.
