It’s designed to help you better understand the language we use on the platform and make the most of your experience.
The 360 score is a complete score showing overall supplier risk and performance within the platform. The score consists of Alert Score (40%), Peer Score (Industry Score and Country Score)(30%), Assessment Score (20%) and External data score(10%). The Tier N score is presently not influencing the score of the Target. You can read about it here in detail and the separate scores will be quickly explained in the glossary as well.
An action refers to a structured task or measure initiated in response to an alert, risk event or in order to prevent risk. You can take actions based on alerts, which are qualified as remedial actions, as for example a statement request, or preventive actions, as for example sending a self assessment questionnaire. Actions help companies manage and mitigate risks efficiently by assigning responsibility, tracking progress, and ensuring accountability.
An Alert is a media report analysed by Prewave and displayed within the Feed tab.
The Alert Score is part of the 360 Score. The Alert score is calculated based on the impact and the number of alerts associated with the target in question, the timing of these alerts as well as the target's size.
Each alert has a priority that depends on the perspective. The higher the priority, the more impact an alert has on the risk score. For example, an alert with a Mid priority has a lower effect than an alert with a Critical priority.
The more alerts there are associated with a target the higher the effect on the score.
Different events impact the score for a different time and all events impact decays over time. A minor event's impact decays fast whereas the decay of a major event's impact takes longer.
The alert score is normalised based on the size of the target. It is expected that there are more risk events happening the bigger the target, and therefore the impact of a single alert decreases with the company size.
The Assessment Score is part of the 360 Score. It is based on Self-assessments completed on Prewave by a supplier. Those can also be taken into account in the risk score. This component is only available for those suppliers who have completed a self-assessment, and the overall score can also be calculated without it.
Business partners
Business partners represent the entities that your company interacts with across the supply chain. These partners can take on different connection types, depending on their relationship to your organization.
A collection is a group of suppliers that have been put together based on a common feature, such as for example product type, department or geography. Collections can be created by users or by Prewave during the set up phase.
Connection types
Understanding the relationship between your own business, suppliers and customers:
Supplier
A business partner marked as a supplier delivers goods or services to your company. This is typically the upstream part of your supply chain.
Customer
A Customer is the recipient of your goods or services. These are typically downstream partners and tracking them may be relevant for transparency or auditability purposes.
Own Business Area
This type represents internal entities within your own organization, such as plants, warehouses or subsidiaries. Marking them as own business area allows for internal traceability and the mapping of goods movement across your company’s internal structure, helping maintain compliance integrity throughout the full chain.
An event group is a collection of related event types that are grouped under a broader thematic category. Event groups (e.g. Health & Safety, Labor rights, Environment) differ based on the selected perspective (e.g. Sustainability, Disruption, LkSG).
Event type
An event type in Prewave is a specific category of incident or risk that the platform monitors and scores, like “Fire”, “Labor Rights Violation”, “Product Recall”, or “Earthquake.” Prewave has over 120 distinct event types, organized into broader event groups (e.g. Health & Safety, Labor rights, Environment) depending on the user’s chosen perspective (e.g. Sustainability, Disruption, LkSG)
External data provided by the Prewave user can also be considered in the risk score. External data could be for example the user's own risk assessment of a supplier. The value must be provided in a numeric format. This is an optional component of the score, and the overall score can be calculated also without external data. The external data score can be added at a supplier profile in the data tab.
A process where users assess and take action on supply chain incidents detected by Prewave’s monitoring system in the form of alerts, ensuring relevant issues are addressed and resolved efficiently.
Mapping
In Prewave, Mapping refers to the process of Tier-N mapping where not just direct (Tier-1) suppliers, but also deeper layers of the supply chain — including Tier-2, Tier-3, and beyond are included.It allows companies to visualize and monitor the full, extended supply chain network, identifying risks even in indirect suppliers that are further down the chain. This visibility helps organizations manage hidden risks, improve resilience, and meet regulatory requirements like supply chain due diligence laws.
An evaluation tool to measure how advanced or resilient a supplier is across specific domains (e.g., sustainability, risk management) by checking divers certifications.
The Peer score consists of the Alert scores of all companies in the same industry (Industry risk) as well as the Country risk.
The only difference of the Industry risk in relation to the standard Alert score is that the timing is not taken into account. Therefore, the Industry risk is an assessment of the given industry's riskiness based on all alerts in Prewave in that industry, irrespective of when they were created.
The Country risk is not calculated based on Prewave alerts. Various publicly available indices published by international organisations such as ILO (International Labour Organization), ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation) and EPI (Environmental Performance Index) are the data source for this score.
A perspective provides a tailored filter, ensuring that the data displayed is highly relevant to the users specific roles and responsibilities. This customization is key to preventing information overload by filtering out irrelevant data, allowing users to concentrate on the information that is most pertinent and valuable to their tasks.
This approach not only enhances productivity and efficiency but also supports effective decision-making by aligning the data environment with the strategic needs and goals of different user groups.
Red Flag
Red Flag stands for the highest priority in Prewave (4 red dots). These are the most critical alerts and can verify depending on the perspective
Regional monitoring
Regional monitoring is enabled based and depending on the address information that was provided when creating a new target profile. It can be categorized into three levels of quality:
Country level - given that the country is mandatory this will always be available. It means that any event which affects a whole country will be considered.
City level - if the city that was provided could be handled by the automation, meaning that it is identifyable and unambigious, any event which affects a whole city will be considered.
Address level - if the address that was provided could be handled by the automation, meaning that it was possible to point it to specific GPS coordinates, any event which affects that specific location will be considered.
When you request screening for a target, you are requesting to see a historic alert score of that specific company. This gives you the ability to have a more holistic overview of the past alerts as well.
Site
A specific physical location where a supplier operates - such as a factory, office, or distribution center - that Prewave monitors for risk and performance.
Site Group
Site Groups represent the highest organizational level. Oftentimes it reflects the mother company of a factory. Every supplier location is connected to a Site Group. E.g. Volkswagen Site group connects all factories and locations of Volkswagen worldwide.
Supplier
Within the platform we use supplier as the general term for an entity providing goods or services. A direct supplier can also be referred to Tier-1 supplier whereas Tier-N suppliers go further down the supply chain. A supplier will have a profile in our platform which we refer to as target. Our clients often use other terms to describe the same as for example vendor
The Supplier Disruption Status is giving an indication for the supplier’s ability to fulfil orders and meet contractual obligations due to unexpected interruptions. These disruptions can be caused by various factors such as, for example:
Natural Disasters – Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, or fires impacting the supplier’s operations.
Logistics Issues – Transportation delays, port congestion, or supply chain bottlenecks.
Raw Material Shortages – Limited availability of essential materials due to demand-supply imbalances.
Financial Instability – Supplier bankruptcy, funding issues, or cash flow problems.
Regulatory or Compliance Issues – New trade restrictions, sanctions, or non-compliance with regulations.
Workforce Issues – Labor strikes, employee shortages, or political unrest.
Technological Failures – Cybersecurity breaches, system failures, or equipment breakdowns.
Our system will give an automatic status update based on the alerts it reviewed. You also have the possibility to adjust and adapt the status yourself.
Suppliers provide responses about their own operations, policies, or practices within questionnaires.
A target/target profile is a company profile (supplier, customer or own business area) within the Prewave platform. You can find detailed information about that company at its target profile.
Tier-N Score
The Tier N score is presently not influencing the score of the Target. Tier N score provides an abstract overview of a target’s deeper supply chain, considering the Industry Risk and the Commodity Risk (when a supplier is associated with a commodity in Prewave). It can be used to assess critical suppliers in the Supply Chain
Validation
Validation describes the process of master data matching. The customer's data is compared against Prewave’s existing data, and if Prewave is confident that the customer is referring to the same site already in our system, the customer's targets are validated — meaning their existence is confirmed.
If the site is unknown to Prewave, other databases are going to be checked to see if the site is recognized elsewhere. If so, the site's existence is also validated.