Supply Chain Disruptions and Manufacturing Strategies: The Case of Exceptional Positive Demand Events

In the field of manufacturing strategy and supply chain management, navigating disruptions and so-called “black swan events” is essential within today’s dynamic and often unpredictable business environment. Yet, while research usually emphasizes the negative impacts of demand disturbances, less attention has been given to disruptions that result in exceptional increases in demand. We analyze application cases in manufacturing reporting such positive exceptional demand disruptions and their embedded management challenges. Despite their positive effects on profit at the beginning, these disruptions – referred to here as “silver swan events” – pose similar severe threats to corporate and supply chain health, paralleling the risks associated with negative disruptions such as the well-known black swan events. We propose this new typology of “silver swan events” as a critical yet underexplored category of supply chain disruptions, where further research and interest is highly warranted in order to enable strategic manufacturing planning.