Black Swans Are Not an Excuse for Weak Supply Chain Preparedness

Bernard Milian argues that Black Swans should not be used to excuse weak preparation. Rare events are hard to forecast, but organizations can still design buffers, alternative suppliers, escalation rules and decision rights before disruption occurs.

The operational lesson is that Supply Chain Resilience depends on preparedness, not prediction alone. Value requires rehearsed scenarios, current constraints and named owners; the main failure mode is producing risk analysis without executable response options.