Supply chain risk monitoring: only 20% do it continuously

WEDNESDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 2026

Geopolitics and tariffs top the worry list for 65% of companies. Yet only 19% manage to see beyond their tier-one suppliers.

Supply chain risk monitoring is an almost universal practice among Italian manufacturers, yet almost always discontinuous: 96% of companies say they keep an eye on the risks in their supply chain, and only 20% do so continuously and systematically, with frequent updates and automatic alerts. The figure comes from the Supply Chain Planning Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, presented on 22 September.

What the research says

The survey was carried out between March and June 2026 among 75 manufacturing companies operating in Italy. It is a small sample, so the percentages should be read as trends among respondents rather than a snapshot of Italian manufacturing as a whole. That said, the spread of answers is clear and says something precise about how supply risk is handled.

• Monitoring: 96% of companies watch supply chain risks, but only 20% continuously and systematically.
• Method: 45% keep an occasional, reactive approach, typically after something goes wrong; 31% run periodic reviews; 4% have no structured process.
• Most feared risks: geopolitical instability and tariffs 65%, demand volatility 57%, logistics disruptions 49%.
• Visibility along the chain: 77% cover critical suppliers, 47% extend monitoring to all tier-one suppliers, 19% manage to go further.
• Countermeasures in place: alternative suppliers 62%, diversified sources 59%, revised stock policies 54%, production flexibility 45%.

Supply chain risk monitoring stops at the first tier

That 19% is the number that matters most to anyone buying abroad. It means four companies out of five, among those surveyed, see no further than the supplier they signed the contract with, and nothing of what stands behind it. The obstacles cited are two, both practical: the difficulty of obtaining information about their suppliers' suppliers, and the cost of collecting the data.

For importers from Asia that boundary has an operational meaning. The contracting supplier often assembles or trades; whoever melts the metal, runs the electroplating, makes the cell or the electronic component sits one tier back, and in many cases that is where the non-conformities found at quality control or at customs are born. Not seeing the second tier does not mean the risk is absent: it means meeting it later, when fixing it costs more.

What companies say they intend to do

Eight companies out of ten are working on simulation and scenario analysis capability. Far fewer are working on genuinely reconfiguring the chain: nearshoring, nextshoring and reshoring involve 24% of companies, revising the logistics and production network and diversifying transport routes 22% each, bringing outsourced activities back in house 18%.

Over the following twelve months priorities shift even further towards tools: 23% are preparing to formalise emergency or business continuity plans and 20% to improve demand forecasting, while diversifying logistics routes stops at 1% and revising the network at 7%. The data says companies prefer improving how they decide over changing the structure. It does not say whether that is the right call: moving production costs money, and not every chain allows it.

What it means for importers

The first question to ask is how many of your suppliers are genuinely critical and how often you actually look at them. If the answer is "when something happens", you are in the 45% that acts after the event, and the difference from the 20% is not the amount of data collected but the moment it arrives.

The second concerns the next tier, and it is solved with a clause rather than a platform: have the supplier name the sub-suppliers of critical components and obtain a written commitment to give advance notice of any change. The third concerns alternatives: a second supplier qualified but never tested with a real order remains a name on a list, and the diversification declared by 62% of companies is worth as much as the trials somebody actually ran.

What that 20% really measures

It measures a declared practice, not an outcome. A company monitoring continuously is not by that fact sturdier than one reviewing at intervals: resilience shows when the shock arrives, and the survey does not measure it. In the same way, the 65% naming geopolitics and tariffs as their first concern are not quantifying their exposure to tariffs, they are stating that they think about it: two different things, worth keeping apart.

What the data does signal, and what is worth taking away, is how far Italian companies can currently see along their own supply chain. Almost always one step, and that is the step where quality, compliance and timing are decided.

With La Merce that second tier does not stay a closed box: we know who actually works the component behind the supplier signing the order, which is precisely the information only 19% of the surveyed companies manage to obtain.

Let's talk about your productprojectconceptgoalbrandproductprojectconceptgoalbrandproductprojectconceptgoalbrandproduct