Software Supported Risk Management for the Global Production Networks Configuration

Production networks are becoming more and more complex, as they are rapidly expanding to every corner of the world. While global commerce brings many opportunities and benefits, it also increases the impact and variety of risks. For example, a natural disaster affecting a region that hosts a majority of suppliers for a certain component can have devastating impact on the producers that rely on that component to manufacture their products. Such disruptions have become a rather common threat to Global Production Networks (GPNs).
The EU FP7 funded FLEXINET project looks at the process of decision making for GPN configuration, from ideation to realization of the network. In this process, many different alternatives will be considered and should be evaluated from different perspectives, including risk. FLEXINET provides a set of software applications that can facilitate the process and provide better and faster analysis of the alternatives. This paper considers how these software tools will be used for the purpose of risk management and how the decision makers should engage them to enjoy the benefits.