03-06-2025
Purdue faculty from the Daniels School of Business and the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering have developed a model to allow companies to measure the resiliency of their supply chains. The Purdue Resiliency Index for Supply Chain Management, or PRISMA, was introduced in Indianapolis during the “Strategies for Resilient and Efficient Manufacturing and Supply Chain Symposium” conducted by the Dauch Center for the Management of Manufacturing Enterprises.
Dauch Center Director Stephan Biller, the Amrine Distinguished Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering and the Mitch Daniels School of Business, says many companies strive to make their supply chains more resilient but don’t know how to measure resiliency and trade off resiliency versus efficiency. “We have developed an index with the first Dauch Faculty Fellows and students from the Daniels School and the College of Engineering, which will provide guidance for supply chain resiliency assessment and supply chain redesign when considering reshoring operations to the United States,” says Biller, a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Dauch Fellows Tom Brush, professor of management at the Daniels School of Business, and Hua Cai, Thomas and Jane Schmidt Rising Star associate professor of environmental and ecological engineering and industrial engineering, focused their research on assessing the global lithium supply for U.S. automotive electric vehicle battery production.
“In the past, companies often prioritized cost in their supply chains until a crisis such as COVID-19 or the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred,” Brush says. “PRISMA measures the variations of strategic resiliency implications of redesigning a multi-tiered supply chain, factoring in corporate decisions and the associated technologies the companies have made with key suppliers across the entire supply chain. It allows leadership to make proactive, rather than reactive, decisions.”
The researchers found that bringing more players into the supply chain dramatically improves resiliency, while having a sole supplier in any tier of the chain concentrates risks and reduces the resiliency across the entire value chain. The index also considers the reliability of suppliers based on their home country and allows resiliency assessments not only at the company but also at a country level.
The collaboration between the Daniels School of Business and the College of Engineering began last summer and is one of many efforts of Purdue’s national eXcellence in Manufacturing and Operations (XMO) initiative. XMO, which also includes the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, College of Agriculture and College of Science, fosters a nationwide Purdue-led community that unites physical, digital and sustainable manufacturing and operations.
