This feature is a paid add-on. If it's not included in your contract just yet, please reach out to your dedicated Customer Success Consultant or Account Executive.
What is an Exposure Analysis?
Exposure Analysis is a feature designed to help companies understand how their supply chain is impacted by specific risks such as high risk countries or companies affected by recent disruptions such as natural disasters. This analysis evaluates whether any of your direct suppliers have relationships with companies that pose disruption, compliance or reputational risks within your broader supply chain.
What Problem does the Exposure Analysis Solve?
Managing supply chain risk is complex, especially when dealing with multi-tiered networks. Often, companies do not have visibility beyond their direct suppliers, making it difficult to detect potential risks in lower-tiers. The Exposure Analysis address this challenge by:
Identifying which suppliers in your network have links to specific risks
Revealing which tiers of your supply chain these exposures occur
Providing detailed insights into how these exposures might affect your business
How Can You Benefit from an Exposure Analysis?
By using the Exposure Analysis, you gain:
Risk Visibility: You can see if your tier-1 suppliers are indirectly connected to high-risk entities, helping you proactively manage exposure.
Informed Decision-Making: With detailed data about the exposure, you can make more informed decisions regarding supplier relationships, ensuring compliance with legal and ethical standards and avoiding disruptions.
Supply Chain Optimization: The ability to visualise how risks flow through your supply chain enables better prioritisation of risk mitigation efforts.
How to Use the Exposure Analysis
Accessing the Exposure Analysis
To begin, you can access the Exposure Analysis via the “Tier-N Explorer” tab in the Prewave applications' top bar.
Once in the Tier-N Explorer, choose between the Exposure Analysis and Network Analysis options:
From here, you can either start a new analysis or view an existing one.
Start a new Exposure Analysis
When you choose to “Start a new Exposure Analysis”, you will be taken through a two step process in order to do so. Those two stages are:
Setup
Setup
Analysis Name & Date: Provide a name for the analysis and select a date. This will be stored as metadata for future reference.
Base Collection: This is the group of companies whose risk exposure you want to examine, typically your tier-1 suppliers. You can choose any collection you have added to “My Collections” in the network tab within Prewave.
Exposure Type: This defines what type of exposure you want to find. Currently supported types are:
Collection: This includes the group of high-risk or sanctioned companies you want to check for exposure within your supply chain. You can select any collection you have in My Collections in Prewave.
Country: Given recent geopolitical developments such as trade tensions, an analysis based on a country is useful for example when evaluating if any of a user’s suppliers are located in a country that is imposing increased tariffs and therefore facing potential cost pressure.
Target: An analysis based on a single target is useful for example when the user wants to know if a single company is present anywhere in their supply chain. These kinds of requests might arise when customers inquire the procurement departments about the presence of problematic suppliers in supply chains.
Alert ID, Exposed Collection, Exposed Countries & Exposed Target: Depending on which Exposure Type you select in the previous step, this field will match your selection and ask for specific information. As, for example, if you choose the Exposure Type: Collection, you will then have the field populated to add the specific Exposed Collections.
Tier-N Configuration: you can adjust this configuration, allowing you to create various scenarios for the same analysis.
Review
Review
Overview
Overview
Once the user has successfully defined the parameters and clicked “Create”, the following screen will appear.
The page includes a graph that lists how many base suppliers are exposed to the risk companies per tier.
Additionally, there’s a table displaying more details about each base supplier’s exposures.
The table has 4 columns:
Base Supplier indicates each base supplier from the base collection that has at least one exposure. In case there is more than one exposure, extending the row in the table reveals more details about each exposure, such as which risk companies are found in the supply chain. Clicking the names of the base suppliers will take you to these suppliers’ target profile.
Risk Suppliers displays how many risk suppliers were found in each base supplier’s supply chain on the selected tier-level. Clicking the names of the risk suppliers will take you to these suppliers’ target profile.
Exposure Level indicates whether the base supplier in question is a site or a site group.
Reason for Exposure indicates why each base supplier is exposed. For example, in case of an Exposure Type Country, the column indicates in which country the identified risk suppliers are located.
You can also preview a specific supplier’s exposure details by clicking the "Preview" button.
Graph
Graph
Once a base supplier is selected for “Preview” or the “Graph” tab is clicked, a graph visualizing the exposure is displayed:
This graph highlights supply chains with identified exposures. Each column represents a tier of the supply chain, with suppliers as blocks. Base suppliers appear in the leftmost column, while risk suppliers are highlighted in red.
The graph is sorted by the number of exposures. Base suppliers with the most exposures are listed at the top of the first column, and risk suppliers with the most connections to base suppliers are listed at the top of each tier.
Clicking the lines between suppliers reveals detailed information, such as the products shipped between them.
The thickness of the lines represents the number of shipments between suppliers - thicker lines indicate more shipments.
Suppliers in the graph are clickable. Selecting a supplier highlights it along with all connected suppliers.
For example:
Clicking an exposed supplier will highlight all base suppliers that have this exposed supplier in their supply chain, as well as the paths connecting these suppliers.
Also, hovering the mouse over a supplier reveals some additional details.
Search bar for Base and Risk suppliers
You can search for specific suppliers within both, the base and risk suppliers. You can find this search possibility in the “Review” tab of the Exposure Analysis on the upper right hand side, right below the “Download Report” button.
Downloadable report
After reviewing the analysis, you can download a detailed report by selecting the “Download Report” option located in the top-right corner of the screen for further reference or sharing within your organization.