When one supplier holds too much of a category
A working method for measuring concentration and briefing risk committees in plain language.
Concentration risk is easy to feel and harder to brief. A category owner may know that one logistics partner moves most outbound volume, yet the risk committee still asks for a number they can write into minutes.
We favour a simple view: share of category spend by supplier for the last four quarters, side by side with delivery incident counts. If one name holds more than half the spend and also appears in late-delivery notes, the conversation writes itself. If concentration is high but performance is steady, the brief should say so — panic slides help no one.
Add a second chart for alternate capacity: who else is already approved, what volume they have carried in the past year, and how long a switch would take for the top three SKUs or lanes. Purchasing leaders in Thailand often need this for board packs that travel between Bangkok headquarters and regional plants.
Keep language concrete. Prefer “Supplier A carried 62% of packaging film spend in FY25” over vague maturity labels. Committees act faster on sentences they can verify.