A Risk Assessment and Classification Framework for the Military Clothing Supply Chain

Military Clothing Supply Chains (MCSC) operate under compliance-driven constraints, limited substitutability, and low tolerance for disruption. Although Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) is well established, research on clothing supply chains is dominated by fashion-apparel contexts, where short life cycles, seasonality, and consumer demand volatility shape the prevailing assumptions about risk. These assumptions are not directly transferable to military clothing systems, where material-flow decisions must simultaneously satisfy qualification requirements, documentation, traceability, and continuity objectives. Consequently, an empirically grounded approach to risk assessment and classification tailored to material flow management in the MCSC remains underdeveloped. This paper proposes a risk assessment and classification framework for material flow management in a MCSC. The study applies a mixed-methods design conducted with an expert group representing different stages of material flows. The research procedure comprises five stages. A process-oriented expert study identified 40 undesirable events affecting material flows in the MCSC. All events were classified into ten operational domains and labelled using a fourdimensional impact typology covering material (M), informational (I), financial (F), and quality-related (J) consequences. Experts then estimated probability (P) and impact (I) on a five-point scale to calculate the risk indicator R for each event. For detailed reporting, the analysis focuses on 19 events whose risk indicator corresponds to medium or high risk levels. In addition, a risk matrix is provided to visualise the assignment of the identified events to the respective risk classes and to support prioritisation of mitigation actions. The proposed framework supports risk prioritisation and targeted mitigation planning for material flows in compliance-driven MCSC. It also provides a replicable basis for further validation and refinement of risk classification in defence-oriented apparel networks.

Keywords: SCRM, Decision-Making Under Uncertainty, Risk Classification.