Resilinc, the global leader in supply chain mapping, risk monitoring, and resiliency analytics is sharing exclusive new data revealing the top drivers of supply chain disruptions for 2023. The data compiled by Resilinc’s EventWatchAI, a 24/7 risk monitoring database, reveals that overall disruptions to global supply chains are slowing compared to recent years, with a 5% year-over-year increase.
The top five disruptions for 2023 include:
- Factory Fires
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Labor Disruptions
- Business Sale
- Factory Disruptions
Mergers and acquisitions, along with business sales, also made their way into the top five supply chain disruptions for 2023. While the number of alerts issued for mergers and acquisitions declined by 14% compared to 2022, alerts for business sales grew by just over 7%.
Labor disruptions emerged as a new and noteworthy addition to Resilinc's top five list for 2023. With an 89% year-over-year increase, labor issues played a major role in impacting most industries in the U.S. and globally. From weeks-long UAW strikes affecting 53,700 workers to major layoffs at tech giants Google, PayPal, Meta, and Amazon, labor disruptions such as strikes, shortages, stoppages, and layoffs caused significant disruptions. Rounding out the top five is factory disruptions, which saw a 16% YoY increase.
While the number of disruptions overall is stabilizing and even notably decreasing in some historically high-risk areas, other emerging risk areas experienced substantial year-over-year increases. Notably, alerts for bankruptcies saw a significant 190% year-over-year surge, marking the largest growth increase of all risk events tracked by Resilinc. Rising interest rates, stubborn inflation, and accumulated business debt during historically low interest rate periods were attributed to the high number of business bankruptcies.
Other noteworthy trends highlighted in the data include an increase in alerts related to extreme weather (forest fires up 26% and tornadoes up 108%); financial risk (profit warnings jumped 103% while corporate restructuring increased 79%); ESG and compliance risk (FDA/EMA/OSHA action alerts increased 73% and fine-related alerts went up 66%); and cyber-attacks (up 34%).
The five most disrupted industries included Life Sciences, Healthcare, General Manufacturing, High Tech, and Automotive, marking the third year in a row that these particular industries have been the most impacted.
Of all the 16,103 EventWatchAI notifications sent, more than half (55%) were impactful enough to trigger the creation of a WarRoom—a virtual platform in the Resilinc dashboard where customers and their suppliers communicate and collaborate to assess and resolve disruptions.
Resilinc’s data is gathered by its 24/7 global event monitoring Artificial Intelligence, EventWatch AI, which collects information and monitors news on 400 different types of disruptions across 104 million sources including traditional news sources, social media platforms, wire services, videos, and government reports. Annually, the AI contextualizes and analyzes nearly 5 billion data feeds across 100 languages in 200 countries, making EventWatchAI the industry’s largest, most comprehensive supply chain risk monitoring portfolio.
