Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Japanese firms who make customized goods respond to supply chain failure caused by natural disaster, and shows the process and problem to build virtual dual sourcing with relation to product/process architecture....

In view of the unprecedented devastation of the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), the psychological overreaction tends to emphasize the safety aspects at the expense of the basic principle of designing industrial supply chains that achieve competitiveness and robustness simultaneously....