How do you calculate a supplier risk priority number?

Multiply the severity score by the occurrence score by the detection score, each on the same scale (commonly 1-10). The product is the RPN you use to rank supplier risks against one another.

What is a good supplier risk score?

On a 1-10 scale the RPN can range to 1,000. There is no universal threshold, but many programs flag anything above 100-125 for action and treat any severity of 9-10 as mandatory mitigation regardless of total.

What do severity, occurrence, and detection mean?

Severity is how bad the impact is if the issue reaches the customer; occurrence is how likely the issue is to happen; detection is how likely your controls are to catch it first — a high detection score means it is hard to catch, which raises risk.

Why use multiplication instead of adding the scores?

Multiplying makes any single high dimension dominate, which is the point: a catastrophic, common, undetectable failure should score far higher than three mediocre dimensions. Adding would flatten that signal.

How is supplier RPN different from product FMEA?

The math is identical, but supplier RPN scopes the failure to a supplier's process and reliability rather than the product design. It is the tool SQEs use to decide which suppliers get extra audits, source inspection, or dual-sourcing.

How do I lower a high supplier risk score?

Attack the dimension you can move: improve detection with incoming inspection or source-inspection, reduce occurrence with a process-capability fix or PPAP, or remove severity by redesigning so the failure mode can't reach the customer.

Gaming & Entertainment Hardware calculator

Supplier Risk Calculator

Supplier risk scoring is an FMEA-style way to rank which supplier problems on a gaming hardware program deserve attention first — a wobbly thumbstick potentiometer source, an HDMI connector vendor with yield swings, a single-source thermal-paste supplier. Supply-quality and SQE teams multiply severity, occurrence, and detection into one risk priority number so a portfolio of supplier risks can be triaged objectively instead of by whoever shouts loudest. It matters because in consumer gaming hardware a single bad component lot can trigger a wave of warranty claims or a launch slip. This calculator produces a comparable risk score so you can sort suppliers and focus containment where the math says it hurts most.

What this calculator does

Rank supplier risk for critical gaming and entertainment hardware components such as displays, PCBs, batteries, joysticks, speakers, power supplies, fans, LEDs, and custom enclosures.
Use it when procurement, quality, and engineering need a consistent severity-occurrence-detection score for supplier defects, shortages, long lead times, counterfeit risk, obsolete parts, or weak incoming controls.
It multiplies severity, occurrence, and detection scores into a single supplier risk priority number for ranking and triage.

Formula used

Supplier risk score = supplier issue severity score × supplier issue occurrence score × supplier issue detection score
Use the same scoring scale across comparable supplier risks.

Inputs explained

Supplier issue severity score:
Supplier issue occurrence score:
Supplier issue detection score:

How to use the result

Use it during supplier qualification, PPAP review, or whenever a quality incident forces you to re-rank where audit and containment effort should go.
RPN is ordinal, not absolute — a 200 is not literally twice as bad as a 100, and equal scores can hide very different failure modes, so use it to rank and then judge, not to decide blindly.

Current U.S. benchmarks

Global copper trades at $13,484 per tonne (IMF via FRED, May 2026), up 41.5% in a year, and U.S. industrial electricity averages 8.66 cents per kWh. Both feed electrified-hardware unit economics.
Steel mill PPI stands at 348.53 (BLS, May 2026), up 6.7% from a year earlier. New factory orders are up 2.3% year over year (Census).

Common questions

How do you calculate a supplier risk priority number? Multiply the severity score by the occurrence score by the detection score, each on the same scale (commonly 1-10). The product is the RPN you use to rank supplier risks against one another.
What is a good supplier risk score? On a 1-10 scale the RPN can range to 1,000. There is no universal threshold, but many programs flag anything above 100-125 for action and treat any severity of 9-10 as mandatory mitigation regardless of total.
What do severity, occurrence, and detection mean? Severity is how bad the impact is if the issue reaches the customer; occurrence is how likely the issue is to happen; detection is how likely your controls are to catch it first — a high detection score means it is hard to catch, which raises risk.
Why use multiplication instead of adding the scores? Multiplying makes any single high dimension dominate, which is the point: a catastrophic, common, undetectable failure should score far higher than three mediocre dimensions. Adding would flatten that signal.
How is supplier RPN different from product FMEA? The math is identical, but supplier RPN scopes the failure to a supplier's process and reliability rather than the product design. It is the tool SQEs use to decide which suppliers get extra audits, source inspection, or dual-sourcing.

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.