Supply · 9 min
Reading a supplier map that looks “fine”
Purchasing trees are honest about invoices and dishonest about physics. Three vendors can sit in three categories and still share a mold, a resin lot, or a test house that only appears when a qualification fails. The map looks diversified because the ERP was designed for payables, not for interruption.
Supplier Concentration Studio starts one layer down. We ask which physical object would stop several SKUs at once. Teams in Taiwan often find the quiet node in Hsinchu or a single contractor who “knows the fixture.” None of that is fraud. It is a filing system that never asked the question.
A usable map names the object, the SKUs that sit on it, the lead time to an alternate, and the person who would notice first. If the alternate is a brochure from a second vendor who has never run your tool, write that. Residual honesty is cheaper than a surprise in peak season.
Do not confuse this with dual-sourcing theater. Two POs against one mold is still one trail. The studio’s mild heresy is to keep the trail even when procurement prefers a cleaner slide.