Supply chain risk assessment
Your supply chain is the companies that you totally rely upon to provide the materials for you to carry out a business function or make a product for sale. Let's say that you are a laptop manufacturer and Company A provides the batteries and Company B provides the power supplies; if any of these runs short of either batteries or power supplies it stops you from manufacturing and selling your laptops.
Example
Company C provides your broadband internet access and you are totally reliant upon them for the internet—you may mitigate the risk of the internet failing by adopting vendor diversity, where you purchase broadband from Company D so that if either of your suppliers fails you still have internet access, which is now crucial to any modern business.