How do you calculate a supplier risk score?

Rate severity, occurrence, and detection each from 1 to 10, then apply the weights: severity times 0.40 plus occurrence times 0.35 plus detection times 0.25. With 8, 6, and 7 the score is 7.05.

What is a good supplier risk score?

On this 1-10 scale, under 3 is low risk, 3-6 is moderate and worth monitoring, and above 6 is high risk needing an active mitigation plan. The example score of 7.05 lands firmly in the high-risk band.

Why is severity weighted more than detection?

Severity carries 40% because the consequence of a failure (a line-down or safety recall) is usually harder to buy back than improving detection. Detection at 25% still matters, but you can add inspections faster than you can undo an escape.

Is this the same as an FMEA RPN?

It borrows the severity-occurrence-detection logic of FMEA but replaces the raw multiplication (RPN) with a weighted average, which keeps the output on a readable 1-10 scale instead of 1-1000 and avoids RPN's known non-linearity problems.

How often should I re-score suppliers?

Re-score strategic and single-source suppliers at least annually, and immediately after any quality escape, late-delivery cluster, ownership change, or financial-distress signal that shifts occurrence or detection.

What should I do with a high score like 7.05?

Treat it as an action trigger: qualify a second source, add incoming inspection or supplier audits to cut detection risk, hold buffer stock, and put the account on a quarterly review cadence.

Supply Chain & Procurement calculator

Supplier Risk Score Calculator

The Supplier Risk Score is an FMEA-style rating that blends how bad a supplier failure would be, how often it happens, and how hard it is to catch before it reaches your line. Procurement leads, supply chain risk managers, and SQEs use it to rank a vendor base so scarce audit and mitigation resources land on the accounts that can actually stop production. Unlike a raw dollar-spend view, it surfaces the low-spend single-source supplier whose failure quietly shuts a plant. Scoring every strategic supplier on the same 1-10 scale turns a gut feeling into a defensible, comparable number.

What this calculator does

Score a supplier failure mode risk as a weighted FMEA-style index: 0.40 x severity + 0.35 x occurrence + 0.25 x detection difficulty, so a hazard that is severe, frequent, and hard to catch scores highest.
Use it when supplier risk in supply chain and procurement needs a defensible ranking against other supply chain and procurement risks for the next review.
It computes a weighted 1-10 supplier risk score from severity (40%), occurrence (35%), and detection (25%) inputs.

Formula used

Weighted score = severity × 0.40 + occurrence × 0.35 + detection × 0.25

Inputs explained

Severity of a supplier failure (1-10):
Likelihood the failure occurs (1-10):
Difficulty detecting it before impact (1-10):

How to use the result

Use it during supplier segmentation, annual risk reviews, onboarding of a new source, or after a quality escape to re-rate an incumbent.
The weights are a convention, not a law of physics; a supplier that is catastrophic but rare can still score moderate, so always eyeball a severity of 9-10 regardless of the composite.

Current U.S. benchmarks

U.S. manufacturing runs at 76.0% of capacity (Federal Reserve, Jul 2026). New factory orders are up 7.4% year over year (Census).
Importers paid an average effective tariff of 12.4% of customs value in 2025 across the 57 manufacturing import families MFG Calcs tracks (USITC DataWeb), up from 3.3% the year before. Statutory and effective rates by family, with top source countries, are at mfgcalcs.com/tariffs.
Sourcing currencies as of 2026-08-21 (Federal Reserve H.10): 6.721 CNY and 16.8909 MXN per USD. Landed-cost comparisons move with these daily rates.

Common questions

How do you calculate a supplier risk score? Rate severity, occurrence, and detection each from 1 to 10, then apply the weights: severity times 0.40 plus occurrence times 0.35 plus detection times 0.25. With 8, 6, and 7 the score is 7.05.
What is a good supplier risk score? On this 1-10 scale, under 3 is low risk, 3-6 is moderate and worth monitoring, and above 6 is high risk needing an active mitigation plan. The example score of 7.05 lands firmly in the high-risk band.
Why is severity weighted more than detection? Severity carries 40% because the consequence of a failure (a line-down or safety recall) is usually harder to buy back than improving detection. Detection at 25% still matters, but you can add inspections faster than you can undo an escape.
Is this the same as an FMEA RPN? It borrows the severity-occurrence-detection logic of FMEA but replaces the raw multiplication (RPN) with a weighted average, which keeps the output on a readable 1-10 scale instead of 1-1000 and avoids RPN's known non-linearity problems.
How often should I re-score suppliers? Re-score strategic and single-source suppliers at least annually, and immediately after any quality escape, late-delivery cluster, ownership change, or financial-distress signal that shifts occurrence or detection.

Last reviewed 2026-08-12.