“Our single-source supplier just went down.”
The call came in: your only qualified source for a critical part cannot ship. Fire, bankruptcy, a quality hold, or a capacity decision — the reason matters less than the clock.
Request a Situation ReviewWhat you're facing
- You have days or weeks of inventory, not months.
- There is no documented contingency plan, and no alternate is qualified.
- Your customer or prime is already asking what your recovery plan is.
- You suspect this is not the only single-source part in your supply base.
What this is costing you
- A line-down date on the calendar, with revenue attached to every lost day.
- Premium freight, spot buys, and overtime to stretch what you have.
- Customer confidence — and possibly future awards — if you miss deliveries.
- Engineering and quality time pulled off everything else to firefight.
The questions you're probably asking
- How much time do we actually have?
- How do we qualify an alternate fast without cutting corners we will regret?
- What do we tell our customer today?
- Where else are we exposed like this?
What to do in the next 72 hours
- 1Count every unit: on hand, in transit, at the supplier, and in WIP. Convert it into days of coverage.
- 2Ask the supplier what they can still ship, from where, and whether tooling or material can move.
- 3List candidate alternates and define the minimum qualification evidence you will accept.
- 4Brief your customer with a recovery timeline and the actions already underway.
- 5Start a list of every other part with only one qualified source.
The Exceleor Path
- 01
Discovery
Understand the problem, measure where things stand today, and agree on what success looks like.
- 02
Define the engagement path
Most organizations don't know the path. We do. A proven method, tailored to your situation.
- 03
Training
Bring your people to a clear understanding of the requirements.
- 04
Implement and engage
Carry out the work jointly, with your people involved from day one.
- 05
Verify
Confirm the work was done and meets the requirement.
- 06
Validate
Confirm the original problem is actually solved, measured against the success measures from Discovery.
- 07
Transfer ownership
We collaborate throughout, so your team can run it without us.
- 08
Sustain and grow
We stay close, check in, and catch the next need early. We're here to make sure you succeed.
What you'll have at the end
- Supply protected and a qualified alternate in place.
- A fast-but-defensible emergency qualification process you can reuse.
- A map of the other single-source parts hiding in your supply base.
- A resilience plan with owners, triggers, and dates.
- A risk burndown that shows exposure going down over time.
Why SupplySourceSync
- 30+ years of VP-level supply chain and quality leadership, including $1.85B in supply chain assets managed.
- Certified ISO auditor experience across aerospace, defense, automotive, medical device, and electronics.
- Work with organizations such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Toyota, and Ford.
- We do the work with your people, prove the problem is solved, and hand you the keys.
SupplySourceSync is an Exceleor LLC company.
Related reading
Request a Situation Review
Tell us what is going on. A person, not a bot, will reply within one business day. This is a conversation, not a sales pitch.