Supply Chain Risk Assessment and Management Toolkit

Research themes

keywords

This Supply Chain Risk Assessment and Management Toolkit, developed by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT in collaboration with FMO and Mercon Coffee Group, has the objective of helping companies assess the risks of engaging with or endorsing unlawful/unethical practices in their agricultural supply chains, and defining adequate measures to prevent, minimize and mitigate their impacts.

In what context is this tool useful?

The toolkit groups risks in three major areas:

Supply Chain Risk Assessment and Management Toolkit - Alliance Bioversity International - CIAT - Image

These three areas are further disaggregated into Sub-Areas and Components. Each component is paired with one or more root causes that directly or indirectly influence the presence and magnitude of the risk exposure. The analysis is carried out at a macro and micro level, providing companies a contextualized, nuanced, and granular understanding of the challenges they (may) face, which will guide the development of tailored risk management strategies.

The toolkit is comprised of four different tools:

i) Macro Risk Assessment,

ii) Supply Chain Mapping Tool

iii) Micro Risk Assessment and

iv) Prioritization and Action Planning.

Each tool contains specific instructions and is accompanied by relevant supplementary materials, including data collection instruments and templates designed to streamline the process of inputting and analyzing data. All tools have been designed using generic terms to accommodate different commodities and countries.

The toolkit includes an introductory file with general information to understand and navigate through the different tools and supplementary files. It is important to read this file before any other part of the toolkit to understand its full context.

Watch the video tutorials below on YouTube on how to use the tools

Macro Risk Assessment tool

Download the full toolkit here

Micro Risk Assessment tool

Download the full toolkit here

Supply Chain Risk Assessment and Management Toolkit — Figure 1: Flow of supply chain risk assessment

Results achieved

This toolkit enabled Mercon Coffee Group to redesign how it manages sustainable sourcing. Mercon has included the level of control over risk as a Key Performance Indicator in assessments to track its ambition of 100% sustainable sourcing by 2030. Giacomo Celi, Mercon Coffee Group Sustainability Director, explained that:

“When you talk about sustainability in smallholder supply chains in developing countries and rural areas, there are lots of intangible values and risks that are not easily quantifiable. Yet as a business, we have to take decisions based on data, science and numbers. There are lots of tools for measuring biodiversity or human rights; but there are no values to this and you can easily get lost in the process of defining the best metrics to measure sustainability. What was important in this work with The Alliance was being able to define sources of information that are both contextual to international frameworks and legislations and relevant for business purposes. For example, the risk of child labor can be analyzed very technically in terms of the legislation and ILO standards; but what about risk perception in the industry? Factoring in multiple voices for example from media and civil society are also important when defining the level of risk in a specific country. These metrics can inform our business strategy, capturing market and civil society signals which translate into customer demand. That was very helpful for us, to attribute the level or risk.”   

Read the full story here.

Geographic areas

These tools have been designed to be applicable across diverse countries, commodities, and supply chains. While the methodology was developed for use in nine countries (Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Laos, Nicaragua, Peru, and Vietnam) at the macro level and three (two in the Americas and one in Vietnam) at the micro level, they are currently been applied with two new companies across multiple countries and commodities as well as they used directly by FMO with other clients.

Contact people

Andrés Charry ([email protected])
Tiffany Talsma ([email protected])
Jenny Wiegel ([email protected])

Next steps/variations

All tools have been designed using generic terms to accommodate different commodities and countries. Nevertheless, the team responsible for the assessment must review and adjust the instruments and files for the specific country and commodities to be evaluated (all the information on the suggested adaptations is included in each tool´s instruction section).