What’s Inside

“Day in and day out, it feels like we’re juggling cotton balls in a blizzard.”
–Colonel Daniel Elzie, United States Marine Corps Logistics Command

Few phrases better capture the state of global supply chain risk management today. Environmental disruptions, geopolitical tensions, regulatory shifts, AI-driven uncertainty, and economic volatility have made traditional risk management techniques insufficient. Supply chain leaders need a smarter, more structured way to evaluate where they operate and are most exposed.

In “EPIC Index Update and Country Risk Report,” researchers Alan Amling, Alexandre Rodrigues, and Sara Hsu of the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute present an updated version of the EPIC framework — a tool originally conceived in 2010 and first published in 2014 to help supply chain leaders assess readiness across more than 60 countries worldwide. Their research, conducted through the Advanced Supply Chain Collaborative (ASCC), draws on data from the World Bank, the OECD, and multiple international databases to deliver a comprehensive, data-driven view of global supply chain risk.

The EPIC framework evaluates countries across four critical dimensions: Economy, Politics, Infrastructure, and Competence. Together, these dimensions provide supply chain leaders with a structured method for identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in every major world region. Because no single dimension tells the full story, the framework is designed to give leaders a holistic view of their global exposure.

Additionally, the paper catalogs the four major categories of global supply chain risk—geopolitical and regulatory, economic and financial, environmental and climate-driven, and operational and technological—with current data, regional summaries, and actionable insights for each. As a result, supply chain leaders walk away with both a country-by-country risk ranking and a practical framework for wargaming disruptions, identifying alternative supply chain nodes, and building more resilient global operations.

Download to Explore

• The updated EPIC Index ranking more than 60 countries across economic, political, infrastructure, and competence dimensions
• Current data and insights on the four major categories of global supply chain risk
• Regional supply chain risk summaries for every major world region
• How to use the EPIC framework to assess supply chain location decisions and identify alternative nodes
• The role of AI, geopolitical tensions, and climate events in reshaping global supply chain risk
• Practical strategies for adapting risk management approaches to today’s volatile global environment

Who This White Paper Is For

• Chief Supply Chain Officers and Senior Operations Leaders
• Global Sourcing and Procurement Leaders
• Supply Chain Risk and Resilience Managers
• Corporate CEOs and Chief Financial Officers
• Supply Chain Professionals and Advanced Students

For more in‑depth, industry‑focused white papers from the Global Supply Chain Institute (GSCI) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, visit our white papers library. Recent research produced by the Advanced Supply Chain Collaborative (ASCC) engages industry leaders and UT faculty to explore and report on leading‑edge practices in supply chain management, planning, and innovation.