Enterprises know that merely having a supply chain involves a certain amount of risk, but few do enough to protect against the one-off, extreme incidents that can disrupt them.

Such events — sometimes referred to as “black swans” — include unanticipated catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina, the BP Horizon oil rig explosion, the 9/11 terrorist attack, the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, and even the Volkswagen emissions scandal.

That’s according to Yossi Sheffi, an MIT professor who is director of its Center for Transportation & Logistics.

While most risk-planning processes focus on events that happen relatively often, such as routine weather emergencies, they often ignore the extreme ones that are considered too unlikely to worry about, Sheffi argues.

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