Table of contents
In prior articles we’ve described how supply chain depth is a simple, solid approach to basic supply chain resilience. And it works. But to take SCR to the next level, focus on time. Here are four time-based metrics to check your readiness.
Time to Awareness
What It Means
This is the delay between a disruption happening and you knowing about it. Time to awareness is how long you operate in the dark—your response speed depends on how quickly you get the signal. Is your supply chain set up to reliably send and receive real time intelligence?
What to Measure
- Forecast Communication: Measure the time from when your internal team finalizes a new forecast to when every supplier has received it. If you haven’t laid the groundwork this could easily take 2-3 weeks.
- Supplier Updates: Track how long it takes to receive updates on order status, inventory levels, or supply interruptions from all your suppliers. Include how long it takes to get that information into your planning tools (ERP, Excel, whatever you use).
How to Improve
Are you thinking, “Oh my gosh, we don’t even have a forecast to send out?” Been there. To reduce your time to awareness, focus on making your supply chain more connected. The goal isn't just speed—it's reliable signal flow so you can both act fast when disruption hits.
- Get serious about forecasting: Improve forecast accuracy with real-time inputs from sales and operations. Tighter alignment reduces noise and surprise. Consider some basic S&OP practices.
- Build systems for visibility: End-to-end visibility means every stakeholder sees what’s happening without delay. Use shared dashboards and automatic alerts, favor supplies with excellent connectivity.
- Synchronize Forecast Updates: Forecast changes should flow through your supply chain at the same rate they’re made internally—daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Automate data exchange: Replace spreadsheets and emails with structured, automated status updates that flow directly into your planning systems.
Time to Action
What It Means
Once you spot a problem, how fast can you act? Time to action measures supply chain flexibility—how quickly your operations can pivot to new suppliers under pressure?
What to Measure
- Supplier Selection: Measure the full cycle—from identifying a need for a new supplier to receiving your first shipment. This includes contract negotiation, quality audits, and compliance documentation. Even selecting distribution partners is a key decision that requires buy-in from procurement, engineering, quality, and sometimes manufacturing.
- System setup: How long does it take IT, finance, and procurement to enter a new supplier into your system? 1-2 weeks is really common.
- Alternate Approvals: Time how long it takes engineering, quality, and procurement teams to source and approve a new part that meets the same form, fit, and function as the original.
How to Improve
Flexibility comes from preparation. The more you handle in advance—approvals, alternative sourcing, system readiness—the less scrambling you’ll face when disruption hits.
- Pre-qualify alternates: Don’t wait for a part to go obsolete—approve multiple sources now and keep them updated. This is hard, adding parts ‘just in case’ is not an engineer’s favorite activity.
- Keep hardware solutions handy: For sole source components consider interposers. If your team already has interposers or similar adapters sourced and tested you can react instantly to disruptions.
- Score your suppliers: Monitor basic supplier performance (OTD, acceptance rates) over time so you know where risk is rising. Replace poor performing suppliers now, unreliable suppliers will make a difficult situation much more difficult.
- Standardize Components: Consolidate redundant part specs across designs. Less variety means fewer barriers to quick substitution. Start with caps and resistors. This is best accomplished during design, so try to influence engineering to reuse part numbers they are already using (which can be a pain for them, so be nice!).
Time to Recover
What It Means
This is how long it takes to return to full production after a disruption. You’ve identified the problem, you have solutions, but can you execute them? Think of it as your agility score. If you’re like us these actions weren’t on our radar but once you think about it they really make sense.
What to Measure
- Available credit: The total open credit availability at all your suppliers. Establishing credit lines can take weeks, especially for new companies.
- Material liability: Assess what percentage of your on-order materials are non-cancellable (NCNR) or similar lock in. For high value parts being locked in to a supplier will kill your ability to change sources in an emergency.
How to Improve
Agility is about execution speed. When disruption forces a change in strategy—whether that’s a new supplier, part, or sourcing path—how fast can you make that change real? These actions strengthen your ability to implement quickly:
- Build credit relationships: Maintain healthy credit lines with multiple suppliers so you're never waiting on finance to place urgent orders.
- Reduce BOM complexity: When half your BOM is capacitors, every duplicated spec slows recovery. Clean specs help you move fast.
- Stay sourcing-ready: Keep secondary suppliers warm and pre-vetted, even if you’re not using them yet. Having the relationship ready to activate is everything.
- Modify Terms: For NCNR situations, you can usually at least negotiate cancellation in the event of non-delivery within a specified window or catastrophic failure which might be something like <50% OTD.
Time to Survival
What It Means
Time to survival measures how long production can continue without new sources. This is really about supply chain depth, which we discussed before.
What to Measure
Calculate the number of full production days your existing inventory and in-transit materials can support without any new incoming supply. Be sure to:
- Segment by critical vs. non-critical components
- Account for build rates and buffer locations (e.g., in-house vs. distributor-held stock)
This gives a more accurate picture of your true production runway.
How to Improve
- Balance stock with speed: Don’t just stack safety stock—tighten your awareness and reaction times.
- Simulate scenarios: Stress test your BOMs against common disruption models.
- Protect the bottlenecks: Prioritize buffer inventory for single-sourced or long-lead-time parts.
Make Time Your Friend
Depth gives you a buffer. Time gives you speed. Together, they define resilience. Track these metrics, shorten the delays, and you'll have a resilient supply chain anyone would be proud of.
Want to make this easy? Schedule a free, no obligation Cofactr demo to see how we can help you automate price evaluation, component swaps, and much more.