Impact of Lean and Agile Strategies on Supply Chain Risk Management

Abstract

Supply chain focuses on implementing dynamic strategies to get rapid response with minimal cost when there are unforeseeable changes and high level of environmental instability in the market. The purpose of this study is to provide empirical evidences of effectiveness of lean and agile supply chain strategies on risk management in term of creating robust and resilient supply chain. Moreover, this is the first study proposing a conceptual framework for the internal and external factors which drives the lean and agile strategies in manufacturing setups. Data were collected from 140 supply chain professional in the Pakistani manufacturing industry for hypotheses testing via structural equation modeling. The findings of this study reveals that as an external forces MO is more significantly related to agile strategy as compare to lean strategy, while as an internal force QM is also significantly related to both supply chain strategies. Furthermore lean and agile strategies are also having a direct impact on robust supply chain. While in terms of resilient supply chain, agile supply chain strategy is significantly related as compare to lean strategy.