Supplier Criticality Quick Screen

Business consequence

If the supplier becomes unavailable, which important functions, customers, products, facilities, or systems are affected?

• Which critical function stops or degrades?
• Which customers, products, facilities, systems, or safety controls are affected?
• Can the business substitute the product or service?

Time to impact

How long can the business operate using existing inventory, capacity, alternate processes, or other buffers?

• How much usable inventory or buffer exists?
• How quickly does backlog or service failure become material?
• Does the available time shrink during peak demand?

Switching difficulty

What must happen before a replacement is usable?

• Is a replacement already qualified?
• Are tooling, integrations, data, contracts, customer approvals, or testing required?
• Can the alternate provide enough capacity in the required geography?

Concentration

Does the organization depend on one source, one region, one sub-tier provider, one platform, or one carrier network?

• Do multiple sites or functions depend on the same provider?
• Do apparent alternatives share a sub-tier source, region, platform, carrier, or specialist?
• Is the dependency single-source by design or by current market reality?

Contingency confidence

Has the alternate actually been verified?

• When was the alternate last verified?
• Has switching time been tested end to end?
• Are contacts, credentials, contracts, and data current?
• What evidence would show the contingency has deteriorated?

Escalation rule

Suppliers with high consequence, short time to impact, difficult switching, or weak contingency evidence should move into deeper review.

• Assign a named owner for deeper review.
• Define whether the treatment is redundancy, buffer, qualification, redesign, contract change, monitoring, or accepted risk.
• Set a review date and verification method.

Use a simple four-level screen

For each dimension—business consequence, time to impact, switching difficulty, and contingency confidence—assign a simple level such as low, moderate, high, or critical. The purpose is prioritization, not mathematical precision. Record the evidence behind the rating so another reviewer can understand the judgment.

Escalate combinations, not just individual scores

A supplier with high consequence and weak contingency evidence deserves attention even if current performance is strong. Likewise, a moderate-impact supplier with very short time to impact and no alternate may require treatment sooner than annual spend suggests.