摘要过去的几十年是世界供应链发生巨大变化的时段。随着全球化的不断加速,职能部门实现成本效率的需求持续不变。结果,许多公司搬到沿海进行外包和生产,已便能降低劳动成本和其他成本,如进行精益实践以减少库存和资本,外包和单源。因此,面对空前的挑战和压力,供应链达到前所未有的全球化。事实上,这些障碍有严重影响公司业务连贯性的可能,尤其可以通过破坏供应链。最有挑战力的供应链中断风险之一是自然灾害,因为它们是无法预测和控制的,而且它们的影响极有可能是毁灭性的。基于上述事实来看,公司已经通过建立更具弹性的供应链的方式来缓和他们的风险。然而,如何设计和构造这样的供应链依旧有待进一步研究。因为通常来说,弹性是与冗余和存货增加联系在一起的,而这有可能是非常昂贵和低效的。建设有竞争力的弹性供应链不是一项容易实施的战略,但这绝对是最能够适应当今商业环境的。GKN (吉凯恩)动力传动系统在日本地震中的表现很好地证明了这一点。关键词:供应链,自然灾害,采购,物流,风险管理ABSTRACTThe past few decades have been ones of dynamic change for supply chainsaround the world. With increasing globalization,the need to achieve cost efficiencies infunctional areas grew unabated. As a result many companies moved to offshoresourcing and manufacturing in pursuit of lower labor costs as well as other costreduction strategies such as lean practices to reduce inventory and capacity; outsourcingand single sourcing. As a consequence,supply chain became more global than ever,facing challenges and pressures on an unprecedented scale. In fact, these obstacles havethe potential to severely affect the continuity of the company's business, in particularthrough disruption of the supply chain. One of the most challenging supply chaindisruption risks is Natural disaster events since they are unpredicted, uncontrollable andtheir impact can be massively destructive.Based on above facts, companies have been changing their risk mitigationapproach by creating more resilient supply chain. However, it is not yet clear how todesign and structure them as usually resilient is associated only with redundancy,increasing inventories which can be very costly and inefficient. Building competitiveresilient supply chain is not an easy strategy to implement but it is definitely the mostadequate for today's business environment. GKN Driveline and its experience duringthe Japanese earthquake is a proof of this.Keywords: Supply Chain, Natural Disaster, Sourcing,Logistics, Risk Management