Japanese Customer BCP Surveys: How Suppliers Should Answer
An Excel file arrives from a Japanese customer with a short cover note: "Supply chain survey. Please reply within two weeks." The tabs ask for the address of the plant that makes each part you ship them, where your raw materials and outsourced processes (plating, heat treatment) come from, how many days of stock you hold, how long it would take you to recover after a fire or an earthquake, and who they should call at night if something happens. Some of it reads like a sales question. Some of it asks for supplier names you would rather not share.
This is a supplier BCP questionnaire: a business continuity planning (BCP) survey combined with a request to map the customer's supply chain beyond its direct suppliers. Japanese manufacturers send them because disruptions at companies they did not even buy from directly have stopped their own production lines. Unlike a supplier audit, the main purpose is not to score you. Your customer uses the answers to decide which parts need extra stock, a second source, or an alternate part qualified in advance.
This guide explains why Japanese customers ask, what they do with each answer, how to handle requests for sub-tier supplier names, and what to send when something actually goes wrong. It ends with sample English answers, a checklist, and an email template.
Contents
- Why Japanese Customers Send BCP and Supply Chain Surveys
- Three Disruptions Behind the Questions
- What Your Customer Does With Your Answers
- What a Japanese BCP Survey Asks, and How to Answer
- When They Ask for Sub-Tier Supplier Names
- When the Customer Asks You to Add Mitigations
- Certifications: An Entry Point, Not the Answer
- What Your Customer Needs Right After a Disruption
- Keeping Your Answers Up to Date
- Common Mistakes Suppliers Make
- Checklist Before You Send the Survey Back
- Questions to Ask Your Japanese Customer
- Email Template: Replying With Region-Level Sub-Tier Data
- Limits of This Guide
- FAQ
- Sources
Why Japanese Customers Send BCP and Supply Chain Surveys
A business continuity plan (BCP; Japanese documents use the same English acronym) is a plan to keep critical operations running through an emergency, or to restore them quickly. Japan's Cabinet Office Business Continuity Guidelines list "supply chain disruption" as a scenario to plan for, alongside natural disasters and pandemics. The guidelines point out that because manufacturing is now split across many companies, damage at any one stage (materials, parts, assembly, or transport) can stop the whole chain. A plant that is undamaged still cannot ship if parts do not arrive.
Many Japanese companies have no formal plan of their own. A May 2026 survey by Teikoku Databank, a Japanese credit research firm, found that 21.4% of companies had a BCP, the highest figure since the survey began in 2016. Among small and medium-sized companies, the figure was 18.3%. Since many suppliers are small companies, the customer has to assume some of its parts come from firms with no plan at all.
More companies have plans, but few can see far into their supply chains.
The surveys cover different companies and periods. Figures are as published by each source.
At the same time, buyers are paying more attention to sourcing risk. In the same Teikoku Databank survey, 42.1% of companies that have or plan a BCP said they were diversifying their suppliers or considering it, up 5.2 points from the previous year. Logistics disruption was named as a risk by 36.5%, up 9.0 points. But to diversify, a buyer first has to know how far its supply chain extends, and that is where most Japanese manufacturers fall short. Japan's 2025 Monozukuri White Paper (the government's annual report on manufacturing) looked at 146 manufacturers that include their supply chain in economic-security risk analysis. More than 90% of them look no further than their direct suppliers or two to three tiers beyond. Fewer than 10% look four or more tiers out.
Your survey is the customer's attempt to close that gap. Japan has also designated semiconductors, storage batteries, permanent magnets, and machine tools and industrial robots, among others, as "specified critical products" under its Economic Security Promotion Act, and government support has begun for companies working to secure stable supply of them. For the buyer, procurement now covers keeping supply flowing as well as price and delivery.
Three Disruptions Behind the Questions
A few well-known disruptions explain why Japanese buyers want information about upstream suppliers and recovery capability. Knowing them helps you see what the customer is worried about.
The point of failure was often not the finished-goods maker's direct supplier.
Earthquake and flood: 2021 Monozukuri White Paper. Fire: Renesas Electronics press releases.
The Failure Point Is Often Several Tiers Up
In 2011, damage at semiconductor makers reduced production of cars and many other end products. To an automaker, those chipmakers sat beyond its parts suppliers. The earthquake made Japanese manufacturers widely aware that a company they did not buy from could stop their lines. The effect is strongest for materials and parts that only a few companies or plants can make. This is why your survey asks where your materials come from, not just where your own plant is. For how tiers are organized in Japanese industry, see Japanese automotive supply chain tiers and keiretsu.
Supply Stops Without a Natural Disaster
On March 19, 2021, a fire broke out at Renesas Electronics' Naka Factory. According to Renesas, production capacity in the affected building (N3) returned to 100% of the pre-fire level on June 24, and shipments were expected to return to pre-fire levels around the third week of July. A fire in part of one plant took about three months to restore capacity and nearly four months to restore shipments. Japan's 2021 White Paper on International Economy and Trade cited this fire as an example of accident risk disrupting the automotive supply chain and called for companies to map their supply chains in normal times, not only to write BCPs. The Cabinet Office guidelines add that when only one company is hit, as in a fire, the acceptable interruption is relatively short, because its customers and partners are still operating normally. That is one reason surveys ask about fire and cyberattacks, not only earthquakes. The Renesas and the automotive MCU supply chain article covers the fire in more detail.
Fast Damage Assessment Means Fast Recovery
The 2021 Monozukuri White Paper describes Toyota's experience. After the 2011 earthquake, it took three weeks to get a full picture of damage across its suppliers, and production did not return to normal until September. Toyota then built a system to make supplier information visible (widely reported as its RESCUE database), and the white paper reports that the time needed to assess damage fell to 1.5 days in the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake and to half a day from the 2018 heavy rains in western Japan onward.
The lesson for buyers is that they cannot prevent a disaster, but if they can identify affected parts quickly, they can start alternate production and reallocate stock sooner. The mapping data is preparation for the first few days after a disruption. When your customer asks for plant addresses and sub-tier locations, this is what it wants to be able to do.
What Your Customer Does With Your Answers
You can think of a Japanese buyer's supply-risk work in six steps. Your survey answers feed Steps 2, 3, and 5, and they shape what the customer may ask of you in Step 4.
Buyers narrow the scope first, then dig deep on the parts that matter.
Based on the Cabinet Office Business Continuity Guidelines, arranged as a procurement workflow.
Step 1: Why Your Part Was Selected
Buyers rarely survey every part. They pick parts that are hard to replace, regardless of purchase value. In a fictional example, Company A, an industrial pump maker with 300 employees, has a main model that brings in 60% of its sales. The model has about 800 parts. Company A flagged about 40 of them because each met at least one of these criteria:
- Made to the customer's drawing, with molds or fixtures held by only one supplier
- Bought from only one supplier, or effectively only one company can make it
- Long lead time (for example, three months or more)
- Switching would require the end customer's approval or recertification
If you received the survey, your part probably meets at least one of these. A part that costs a few cents can still stop a finished product.
Step 2: Why They Ask About Your Suppliers
A direct supplier is tier 1; that supplier's own supplier is tier 2. The customer wants to find hidden overlaps. Dual sourcing at tier 1 does not help if both tier 1 suppliers depend on the same tier 2 plant.
Splitting tier 1 can still lead back to a single plant.
Fictional example for illustration.
The Cabinet Office guidelines explicitly warn buyers about this case: when adding sources, check whether suppliers two or more tiers up are the same. If you are one of two sources for a part, expect questions about your microcontrollers, resins, castings, and plating shops, because the customer is checking whether you and the other source share them.
Step 3: The Two Numbers That Matter Most
One practical way to rank parts uses a simple comparison rather than a complex risk score:
- Days covered by stock: days from a supply stop until the customer's line stops, counting the customer's stock, the supplier's stock, and goods in transit
- Days to switch: days until another supplier or an alternate part starts delivering parts good enough for production, including evaluation, end-customer approval, and new tooling
The bigger the gap between the two, the higher the priority. The gap roughly equals the number of days the customer cannot ship.
Three of Company A's parts compared on the same scale.
All day counts are fictional. Real values come from inventory data and input from design and quality assurance.
Your answers about stock and recovery time can feed directly into this kind of table. If you say you can recover in 60 days and the customer holds 20 days of stock, the customer has a 40-day gap to close and may come back to you to discuss options.
What a Japanese BCP Survey Asks, and How to Answer
Formats differ by customer and industry, but most surveys cover the six areas below. The customer cares less about whether you have a BCP document and more about how it applies to the parts you ship them.
Questions focus on how your plan covers the customer's parts.
Customers do not expect a perfect score. They use the answers to decide how much stock or backup they need on their side.
The table below shows what each area is really checking and a sample English answer you can adapt. All plant names, numbers, and days are fictional.
| Area | What the customer is checking | Sample answer (fictional) |
|---|---|---|
| Risks covered | Whether your plan matches the real hazards at your site | "Our plan covers flood, fire, power outage, and cyberattack. Our Plant 2 is in a designated flood zone; we keep finished goods for your parts on the second floor of Warehouse B." |
| Priority of their parts | Whether their parts will be restored first or wait behind other customers | "Part numbers 12345 and 12346 are in our Priority 1 group, restored first after safety checks." |
| Recovery target | A realistic number with a stated basis, not a hopeful one | "Target: 50% of normal volume within 30 days of a fire in Line 3, and 100% within 90 days. Basis: lead time to replace the injection molding machine, quoted by the machine maker." |
| Backup options | Whether recovery depends on one machine, mold, or site | "We hold a second mold for 12345 at Plant 1. Part 12346 has a single mold; a replacement takes about 10 weeks." |
| Your own sourcing | Hidden single points of failure at tier 2 | "Resin: one grade from one maker, produced in two countries. Plating: one outsourced shop in the same province. Resin stock: 25 days." |
| Emergency contact | Who will tell them, and how fast | "First report within 24 hours by email and phone from our Quality Manager (primary) or Plant Manager (backup). 24-hour contact numbers attached." |
A few answering principles:
- Answer per part number, not for the whole company. "We have a BCP" tells the customer nothing about the part it buys.
- Give a basis for every recovery target. An optimistic target that turns out wrong after a disaster damages trust more than an honest long one. The customer will plan stock around your number.
- Admit single points of failure. A disclosed single mold lets the customer plan for it. A hidden one becomes a surprise during a crisis.
- Do not leave fields blank. If you do not know, write "Under review, will confirm by [date]."
When They Ask for Sub-Tier Supplier Names
The questions that make suppliers most uneasy are usually about tier 2: who supplies your materials and purchased parts, and who performs your outsourced processes. A Japanese buyer typically wants three things from a tier 1 supplier:
- The location of the plant that makes the part, and whether another site could make the same part
- Where key raw materials, purchased parts, and outsourced processes (plating, heat treatment, and so on) come from, and where those sources are located
- Where dedicated molds, fixtures, and inspection equipment are kept, and whether spares exist
Your sub-tier supplier names can be commercially sensitive, and Japanese buyers know this. There is a practical middle path that Japanese buyers use: if a supplier is reluctant to name companies, the buyer asks instead for the country or region of each source and whether it is a single site or multiple sites. The buyer's goal is to find concentration in one place, not to go around you and buy direct.
You can offer this option yourself. It answers the real question (is there a hidden overlap?) without exposing your commercial relationships. If the customer still needs names for a specific part, for example to check overlap with its second source, ask for an NDA or ask that the information be used only for risk assessment.
Some industries and customers have their own rules. Automotive customers, for example, may already require notice of any change in sub-tier sources as part of change control. Check your contract and quality agreement before you answer.
When the Customer Asks You to Add Mitigations
After the survey, a customer with a large gap for your part may come back with a request. The Cabinet Office guidelines list four procurement measures: reviewing and splitting inventory, adding sources, working with suppliers, and making alternate sourcing easier. In purchasing terms, they become four practical options.
No single option fits every part. Buyers combine them.
Based on the procurement and supply measures in the Cabinet Office Business Continuity Guidelines, arranged for purchasing work.
Second Source: You May Become One of Two
For low-volume parts, splitting orders can raise unit prices because each supplier gets a smaller share. A common compromise is to keep most orders with one supplier and qualify a second as a backup. The normal split might be 70:30, or 100:0 with qualification only, decided part by part. If you are told you will become the qualified backup, ask what small regular orders will keep your process ready.
Buffer Stock: Agree on Where It Sits and Who Pays
Extra stock can start right away, and it works for small gaps. In the Figure 5 example, about 15 days of extra stock closes the gap for the mechanical seal. Closing a 160-day gap with stock alone would mean holding nearly half a year of parts, which is expensive to finance and store. Location matters too: stock kept only at the customer's plant can be lost with the plant, so the guidelines list splitting storage locations as a measure. The customer may ask you to hold stock at your warehouse or another site.
Holding stock or building a second mold costs money. Japanese buyers are advised not to push these costs onto suppliers one-sidedly, and to discuss storage costs and carrying (interest) costs as a separate item from the piece price. As the supplier, ask for exactly that: quote buffer stock, storage, and spare tooling as separate line items, with agreed quantities, location, how long the stock is held, and who pays for scrap if the design changes. For how Japanese buyers evaluate cost and supplier performance, see Japanese procurement: QCD negotiation and supplier ratings.
Pre-Qualified Alternates: Only Possible in Normal Times
Evaluation testing, end-customer change applications, and process checks rarely finish in time if they start after supply stops. That is why buyers qualify alternates in advance. The guidelines call designing with standard parts "simplifying alternate sourcing." If your part is the only one that can do the job, the customer's design team may look at standardizing it in the next model. You can help by telling the customer early which of your parts have catalog equivalents and which do not.
Certifications: An Entry Point, Not the Answer
Some surveys ask whether you hold ISO 22301, the international standard for business continuity management systems. Japan publishes it as JIS Q 22301, and it is the basis for third-party certification. Japanese domestic suppliers may instead cite a "Business Continuity Enhancement Plan" (jigyo keizokuryoku kyoka keikaku), a simpler BCP for small and medium-sized companies, created under a 2019 law and certified by Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry.
Either one shows that a plan or management system exists. Neither tells the customer how many days it will take to restore its part. If you are certified to ISO 22301, say so, then answer the six areas anyway. If you have no BCP at all, you are not alone: in the Teikoku Databank survey, the most common reason companies gave for having no BCP was "lack of skills or know-how to write one" (42.2%), followed by lack of people (33.5%) and lack of time (28.1%).
Japanese buyers are encouraged to support suppliers that lack a plan rather than simply score them. The Cabinet Office guidelines list asking suppliers to act, supporting them, and running joint drills as examples of working with suppliers. If you have no plan, it is reasonable to ask the customer for its template or a sample of what it expects.
What Your Customer Needs Right After a Disruption
Right after a disaster or accident, a Japanese purchasing team usually does three things:
- Pull every part linked to the affected region or plant from its supplier list
- Check its own stock, work in process, and goods in transit for those parts, and work out how many days they cover
- Through its sales team, warn its own customers early about the likely impact
Step 1 is fast only if plant and tier 2 locations are already on file. That is why the survey asks for them. You can make Steps 1 and 2 easier by reporting early, even with incomplete information, and giving numbers the customer can use. The table below is one way to structure that first report.
| Item | What to include |
|---|---|
| Status of people | Whether employees are safe (no names needed) |
| Status of plant and equipment | Which buildings, lines, molds, and fixtures are affected; "unknown" is acceptable at first |
| Affected part numbers | The customer's part numbers, not only your internal codes |
| Inventory and goods in transit | Finished goods, WIP, and shipments in transit, by part number |
| Sub-tier impact | Whether key material or process suppliers are affected, if known |
| Next update | When you will report again (for example, every 24 hours) |
A short first report sent early is usually more useful than a complete one sent days later. Toyota's drop from three weeks to half a day came from having information ready in advance.
Keeping Your Answers Up to Date
The 2021 Monozukuri White Paper found that more than half of Japanese manufacturers do not update their supplier information regularly. Plants move and subcontractors change, so a list nobody updates stops matching reality within a few years. Japanese buyers are encouraged to tie updates to routine events, and you will see requests at these times:
- When you notify a change in production site, material, or subcontractor (often handled as a 4M change notice; see the supplier audit checklist for Japanese customers)
- When the customer adopts a new part from you, or you start supplying a new customer plant
- During the annual supplier evaluation, where quality, cost, and delivery performance are reviewed
Keep your own master copy of the answers, by part number, so that each update takes minutes, not a new project. Some customers also run an annual tabletop exercise ("assume a major earthquake in Region X") and may check whether your contact numbers still work.
Common Mistakes Suppliers Make
Most problems come from how the survey is handled, not from the questions.
Adapted for suppliers from common buyer-side mistakes: surveys filed and never used, work kept inside purchasing, lists never updated.
On the buyer side, a common failure is collecting surveys and filing them without using them to assess gaps and choose mitigations. Inside your own company, the same lesson applies: sales or purchasing alone cannot answer recovery and switching questions. Involve production, quality assurance, and design, and get management to assign people to the high-priority parts.
Checklist Before You Send the Survey Back
- Every part number in the survey has a production plant address
- Each part says whether another site could make it, and how long a transfer would take
- Key materials, purchased parts, and outsourced processes are listed with country or region and single vs. multiple sites
- Dedicated molds, fixtures, and inspection equipment are listed with location and whether a spare exists
- Stock days are stated per part (finished goods, WIP, key materials)
- Recovery targets include volume, timing, and the basis
- Single points of failure are disclosed, not hidden
- Emergency contacts include a primary, a backup, and 24-hour numbers, and the people know they are listed
- Any ISO 22301 certification is stated with scope and expiry date
- Answers match what you have told the customer in audits and change notices
- Your sales or account manager has reviewed answers that could affect commercial terms
Questions to Ask Your Japanese Customer
- Which part numbers does this survey cover, and why were they selected?
- How will the information be used, and who inside your company will see it?
- Is it acceptable to give country or region instead of sub-tier supplier names?
- How many days of stock do you hold for our parts, so we can see the gap?
- If you want us to hold buffer stock or spare tooling, how should we quote it?
- How often will you ask us to update, and should we use the same file?
- Who should we contact first on your side if our plant is affected?
Email Template: Replying With Region-Level Sub-Tier Data
Adapt this when you want to answer the survey fully but keep sub-tier supplier names confidential.
Subject: Supply chain survey – reply for P/N 12345, 12346
Dear Mr. Tanaka,
Thank you for your supply chain survey. Please find our reply attached.
For key materials and outsourced processes, we have listed the
country/region of each source and whether it is a single site or
multiple sites, instead of supplier names, because those names are
confidential under our agreements with them. We hope this gives you
what you need to check for overlap with other sources.
If you need supplier names for a specific part, we are happy to
discuss this under our NDA.
Two points we would like to discuss:
1. Recovery target: for P/N 12346 we have one mold, and a replacement
takes about 10 weeks. If this is longer than your stock covers,
we can quote buffer stock or a second mold as a separate item.
2. Emergency contact: our 24-hour contacts are on the "Contact" tab.
Please let us know your contact for the first report.
We will update the file whenever we submit a change notice, and at
the annual supplier evaluation.
Best regards,
[Name]
[Title], [Company]Limits of This Guide
- Survey formats, required fields, and confidentiality rules differ by customer, industry, and contract. Follow your customer's instructions and your quality agreement where they differ from this guide.
- The six-step process and four mitigations are based on Japanese government guidelines and common Japanese procurement practice. Individual companies may use different methods or scoring.
- The company examples, part numbers, and day counts in the hypothetical scenarios and sample answers are fictional. Figures cited from published sources (survey results, the Toyota and Renesas cases) are not.
- This guide does not cover legal obligations. Disclosure of sub-tier suppliers, cost sharing for buffer stock and tooling, and export control or economic-security requirements should be checked with your legal and contracts team.
- Statistics describe Japanese companies surveyed in Japan. They do not describe your customer specifically.
FAQ
What is a supplier BCP questionnaire?
It is a survey a customer sends to check how a supplier would keep supplying, or recover, after a disaster, accident, or other disruption. Japanese versions usually combine BCP questions with supply chain mapping: plant locations, sub-tier sources, stock days, recovery targets, and emergency contacts.
Do I have to disclose my sub-tier supplier names?
Not always. Many Japanese buyers mainly want to know whether sources are concentrated in one place. Offering the country or region and whether each source is a single site often meets that need. If the customer needs names for a specific part, discuss it under an NDA and check your contract first.
Will a long recovery time hurt my supplier rating?
How customers score it varies, but the main use of a recovery estimate is to decide how much stock or backup the customer needs. A long but honest estimate lets the customer plan, and it may ask you to hold buffer stock or add a spare mold, which you can quote separately. An optimistic target that proves wrong during a real event leaves the customer without a plan.
Is ISO 22301 certification required?
It depends on the customer, so check the survey instructions. Certification shows a management system exists, but customers still want part-level answers: which parts you restore first, how fast, and how they will hear from you.
How often should I update my answers?
Update them whenever production sites, materials, or subcontractors change, when you start supplying a new part, and at the customer's annual supplier evaluation. A master file per part number makes this quick.
If a Japanese customer is also asking about your finances, see Japanese supplier financial health: warning signs and checks, which covers the buyer's view of supplier failure risk.
Sources
- BCP definition, business impact analysis, procurement and supply measures: Cabinet Office (Disaster Management), Business Continuity Guidelines (March 2023, Japanese)
- BCP adoption rates, supplier diversification, reasons for no plan: Teikoku Databank, Survey on Business Continuity Planning (2026), June 25, 2026 (Japanese)
- How far manufacturers look into the supply chain: METI, MHLW, MEXT, 2025 Monozukuri White Paper, summary (Japanese)
- Supplier visibility after 2011, past disasters, Toyota example: METI, MHLW, MEXT, 2021 Monozukuri White Paper, summary (Japanese)
- Need for supply chain visibility: METI, White Paper on International Economy and Trade 2021, Part II, Chapter 1, Section 4
- Naka Factory fire and capacity recovery: Renesas Electronics, UPDATE 10: Naka Factory Fire Production Capacity Recovery Status
- Toyota supplier database after 2011: Toyota, "Five Years On: Toyota's Efforts to Build a Disaster-Resilient Future"
- Supply items and suppliers template: Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, SME BCP Formulation and Operation Guidelines (Japanese)
- Business Continuity Enhancement Plan: Small and Medium Enterprise Agency (Japanese)
- ISO 22301 and JIS Q 22301: Information Management System Accreditation Center (ISMS-AC), BCMS conformity assessment scheme (Japanese)
- Specified critical products: Cabinet Office, supply chain resilience under the Economic Security Promotion Act (Japanese)
Original article in JapaneseThis guide is adapted from a MONOSCOPE article written for readers in Japan: サプライヤーBCPと調達リスク｜多層供給網を見える化する6ステップ
About the editor
MONOSCOPE EditorFOUNDER & EDITORSpent about ten years at a plant equipment maker and a plant engineering company, proposing, designing, and commissioning equipment, then moved into web marketing. Now a web consultant for B2B manufacturers, helping them explain their products and technology. Licensed in Japan as an Energy Manager and a Third-Class Chief Electrical Engineer.
Has run an engineering blog since 2017 (500+ articles) and a Japanese YouTube channel with about 20,000 subscribers. Each English guide is written from the Japanese shop-floor point of view and checked against the cited standards.
