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Prof. Thomas Younghoon CHOI
Department of Supply Chain Management
W. P. Carey School of Business
Arizona State University

Recent events involving supplier-caused business disruptions bring to the forefront the issue of managing critical suppliers that may exist deep in a supply chain. While managing prominent top-tier, strategic suppliers is well understood, we have only just begun to recognize a different type of critical suppliers we call nexus suppliers. Nexus suppliers can be several tiers removed in the extended supply network and hence may not be in direct contact with the focal buying firm. They are critical because of their structural positions in the supply network. This presentation weaves together a series of papers published in Harvard Business Review (Online), Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, and Decision Support Systems. We will consider the concept of nexus suppliers and the development of nexus supplier index (NSI). Using a publicly available data source (i.e., Bloomberg Terminal), the proposed NSI model is empirically implemented for the real-world network of buyers and suppliers extending out to the fourth-tier from Honda Motor Company as a focal company. The development of NSI has been funded by CAPS Research.