Supply chains are increasingly becoming complex webs and networks and are no longer straightforward chains with just a few links between supplier and customer.  Supply chains have indeed become complex systems, and the system thinking that pervades Einarsson and Rausand (1997) An Approach to Vulnerability Analysis of Complex Industrial Systems is perhaps applicable to supply chains? Why?  Perhaps because, really, there is little difference between vulnerability in supply chains and vulnerability in complex industrial systems.

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