What is the difference between robustness and resilience in supply chains?

Robustness focuses on resisting shocks, while resilience focuses on adapting and recovering quickly. Robust Supply Chains are built to absorb stress within their existing design, often through redundancy in capacity, suppliers or inventory. Resilient Supply Chains are built to reconfigure under stress, using flexibility, visibility and fast decision-making to recover from disruptions they cannot fully prevent. Most modern operations need both, since the cost of pure redundancy is high and the cost of pure flexibility is unreliable response under repeated stress. The practical question is which mix delivers the best service level and working capital outcome given the actual volatility the business faces.