How SICK Sped Up Its Disruption Response Time From a Few Days to a Few Hours
Industry
Company Size
Location
The Background
One of the world’s leading producers of sensors and sensor solutions deployed in factories, logistics, and other industrial settings, SICK helps equip businesses with the technology they need to become more dynamic, efficient, and environmentally sound. Founded in 1946 and headquartered in Waldkirch, Germany, SICK has a portfolio of over 40,000 products encompassing not only sensors and sensor systems but laser scanners, encoders, transmitters, and measuring devices. The organization’s flagship products—and the sensor intelligence they provide—play a critical role in the automation efforts of companies running warehouses, manufacturing sites, and logistics operations.
SICK has over 10,000 employees and 60 offices worldwide, including locations in Texas, Massachusetts, and its North American headquarters in Minneapolis. The sensor manufacturer has been recognized on numerous occasions as one of the top places to work in Germany, and SICK’s LIDAR sensor devices have been used in a number of high-profile autonomous racing competitions.
The Challenge
Martin Linow began his career at SICK as a technical purchaser for new products before transitioning to a role as a strategic purchaser for optoelectronics and electromechanical parts. Today, he works as a resilience part manager, a relatively new role at the company. While obsolescence continues to be a critical part of Linow’s job, in recent years his responsibilities have expanded to include a stronger emphasis on other supply chain risks. “It’s gone more and more in the direction of supply chain risk analysis, and strategies and tactics to make the supply chain more resilient for our company,” he said.
When Linow started working as a resilience part manager in late 2023, he followed a specific process for assessing supply chain disruptions that SICK had been effectively deploying for years. When a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan in 2024, Linow leaned on this protocol. He went into SICK’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and accessed various forms of part documentation in an effort to identify all the components the company sourced from Taiwan.
According to the system, SICK sourced several thousand parts from the country. Linow began reaching out to the company’s suppliers in Taiwan, but eventually became swamped by the scope of the undertaking. His suppliers were similarly pushed to their limits. With so many components for them to verify, “you quickly overwhelm them,” Linow said.
Because SICK sourced so many parts from Taiwan—which were all technically vulnerable to the natural disaster that had just struck the island nation—it took Linow between four and five days to verify the status of those electronic components. Even then, however, he was only able to confirm around three-quarters of the total parts. For Linow and his colleagues, the challenge presented by the earthquake was a watershed moment.
While SICK had always maintained a robust internal risk management program, the complexity of modern supply chains, as well as the sheer number of parts resilience managers like Linow are now responsible for, suggested that they would likely benefit from additional technological support. A supply chain risk management tool could give them access to the data, visibility, and real-time monitoring that helps companies save valuable time in the midst of critical disruptions. “That was the reason why we said, ‘Okay, we have to be better,’” he said. “And that was the starting point for the market research.”
Within a month, they were searching for a supply chain risk management (SCRM) solution.
Solution
After the earthquake, Linow and his colleagues knew they would benefit from supplementing SICK’s existing protocol with a risk management solution. To address that need, Linow led a comprehensive search of possible SCRM tools, evaluating risk management software ranging from Silicon Expert to Resilinic to Accuris to Prewave. “You say the name and we tested it,” Linow recalled.
When Linow and his colleagues moved forward with a free trial for Z2, they were impressed by the way users could intuitively access different data points on parts and manufacturing sites, while also seamlessly toggling between multiple tools. “Z2 gives you information to help you move faster, and you don’t have to open a lot of tabs and click from one to the other,” he pointed out. “For me and my colleagues, this was really outstanding.”
The clear user interface and high degree of navigability quickly distinguished Z2 from other potential candidates. With other tools, Linow added, “you have to open new tabs and re-enter information.” And because of the way many other tools forced him to start from scratch when he wanted to analyze new specifications, Linow often found himself forgetting the specific data point he’d initially set out to look for.
Another key aspect of Linow’s market research was evaluating the accuracy of the tools SICK was testing. Data accuracy was essential to Linow and his ability to rely on these tools during high-stakes disruptions. Because of this, it was the single-most important factor in the selection process. He asked every risk management vendor about the accuracy of their data, as well as their confidence level that it would hold up to cross-referencing and other forms of verification. “Because we’re making decisions for our company, and for multiple sites,” he said. “So this is the major point for everything.”
To verify the accuracy of each tool’s data, Linow and SICK took the information obtained from Z2 and other software providers during free trials and cross-referenced it with data gathered directly from their suppliers and manufacturers. These steps were carried out for site mapping, obsolescence forecasting, and RoHS and REACH compliance. Following an exhaustive verification process, all the intelligence provided by Z2 checked out. “We double-checked and got the confirmation,” he said. “It gave us a good feeling—a feeling that the information was solid.”
After a thorough search that included trials of nearly a half-dozen software tools, Linow and his colleagues decided to move forward with Z2. “It took us two or three months to really check everything,” he recalled. The tool’s intuitive design, navigability, and accurate, granular data all factored into the final decision.
SICK moved forward with Supply Chain Watch and Part Risk Manager in October 2024, before later adding Responsible Minerals in 2025.
Result
During the onboarding process, Z2Data quickly exceeded expectations for out-of-the-box parts coverage. One of Linow’s goals was to eventually reach 85% mapping coverage for SICK’s components. “But it was really funny—as soon as we started, we already exceeded 85% coverage with Z2," Linow said. Before any additional research or supplier campaigning, that is, SICK was able to obtain coverage for over 85% of its parts with Z2. “Out of the box it passed the value coverage,” Linow recalled. “This was like—Wow.” Once he utilized Z2Data’s full mapping service, SICK was able to eventually reach close to 100% coverage on its parts. “This was much more than we expected could be possible.”
Arguably more important, Linow has leveraged Z2Data to help him transform how he manages supply chain disruptions. In the immediate aftermath of the Taiwan earthquake in 2024, the resilience part manager needed several full days to understand SICK’s risk exposure (which was not out of the ordinary, given how many parts the company sourced from the country). But with Z2 and its Supply Chain Watch tool, he’s now able to determine the company’s exposure in a matter of hours. “We went from getting a picture in days, to doing part of our mitigation after a few hours,” he said. Linow also noted that Z2’s customized impact analysis is twice as fast as most of the other tools SICK tested during the market research process.
One of the most consequential ways Z2 and Supply Chain Watch have streamlined Linow’s work is by helping him narrow the scope of potentially affected SICK parts during a disruption. When the 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan in 2024, Linow scrambled to account for several thousand components the manufacturer sourced from the country. But now, Z2’s customized impact analysis allows him to focus on a much smaller, more manageable number of parts. “Because of the alerting, you have the summary of which components are affected in which region,” Linow said. “The granularity is much, much better.” Using Supply Chain Watch, Linow is now often able to narrow down the list of the most vulnerable parts to less than 50—a far cry from thousands.
Finally, integrating Z2 and Supply Chain Watch into his daily workflow has bolstered Linow’s own capabilities, giving him the confidence to manage SICK’s part resiliency on his own. “I can handle it alone,” he said. “Without Z2—no chance. Definitely no chance. Then it would be totally reactive, from newspapers to Google alerts.” But with the proactive intelligence provided by Z2, he’s able to maintain a measured, even-keeled approach to supply chain risk—one that reverberates through the rest of his company. When his colleagues are notified of a developing disruption that could impact their sourcing, he said, he immediately reassures them: "We’re already in the mitigation phase, and we’ve mainly covered it.”
Asked whether he would recommend Z2, Supply Chain Watch, and Part Risk Manager to others in his field, Linow expressed little hesitation. “I already did and I will continue to,” he said. “Z2 is outstanding for my position when it comes to managing risks.”
FASTER DISRUPTION ASSESSMENT
EXPANDED PARTS COVERAGE
RAPID, GRANULAR, EVENT ALERTING
“We went from getting a picture in days, to doing part of our mitigation after a few hours."