last week I blogged about an article on Bloomberg which reported on how Toyota suppliers had hired private detectives to investigate their own suppliers. Car component manufacturers are, not surprisingly, struggling and suppliers to Toyota simply can't afford any weak links in their chain. After all, if their suppliers fail, then they fail and, ultimately, Toyota fails.

Or, at least, Toyota finds new suppliers...

The issue of failing Chinese suppliers is not just one for the likes of Toyota, however. Many western businesses have so much of their supply chain based in the country, that they would be similarly affected should factories they use start to close. The problem is, however, that they may not find out until it's too late.

To help combat this, Panjiva has developed a service with Sinosure to assess the risk of failure of Chinese suppliers. Its product, SinoScreen, looks at 20 Chinese suppliers and, based on Panjiva's assessment of import data and Sinosure's analysis of credit data, an overall report is produced which, at least in theory, provides a view of which are most likely to fail.

The service is particularly timely. And while many larger, more mature, organisations would be expected to carry out such anaysis themselves, there is no harm in having a little bit of extra intelligence and data.

Read more about the service at Panjiva's blog.