A supply chain disturbance management fuzzy decision support system

Abstract

This paper presents a supply chain disturbance management fuzzy decision support system model developed to support managers in their decision-making process of selecting the best operational policy (e.g., mitigation and/or contingency plans) to counter supply chain disturbances, thus improving supply chain resilience. The selection of such operational policies is based on the calculation of performance indexes that reflect the supply chain performance in different scenarios (e.g., normal operation, affected by disturbances, implementation of mitigation plans or implementation of contingency plans). The developed system lays on two pillars: first, on the use of fuzzy set theory to model the uncertainty associated with disturbances, their effects on the supply chain and the computation of the referred performance indexes; second, on the simulation of the supply chain under the effect of disturbances or operational policies, by coupling the system with a simulation software.