Supply chain resilience and industry 4.0: a evaluation of the Brazilian northeast automotive OEM scenario post COVID-19

In the present financial and economic context, the automotive industry faces new challenges posed by the current crisis. Companies have to ensure that the quality products are delivered on time and in a competitive price. One of the most recommended techniques of quality management by specific standards of the automotive industry for product development is Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP). Product Quality Planning is a structured method of defining and establishing the steps which are necessary to ensure the customer satisfaction from the product. The goal of this paper is to present the results of evaluation of awareness and knowledge the APQP techniques in Polish and Romanian automotive industry. The research method was a questionnaire with indicators to measure the awareness APQP tools. The research was conducted among design and technology professionals in Polish and Romanian automotive companies. On the basis of questionnaire it was performed a comparative analysis of results from Poland and Romania. In this way it is shown which methods and tools of APQP are better known and understood in each country. It was pointed out which tools are difficult to use or there is lack of knowledge about them. It was also shown which methods are most often used in the Polish and Romanian automotive companies. They were also summarized the similarities and differences in the knowledge and using the APQP in both countries.

Building responsive and resilient supply chains: Lessons from the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 disruption

PurposeThis study aims to analyse whether the presence of supply chain complexity (SCC) influences firms to improve their supply chain (SC) resilience and SC robustness capability. This study also examines an important paradox: whether investing in both exploitation and exploration practices is conflicting or complementary to enabling SC resilience and robustness in the presence of SCC.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a survey-based approach to collect 242 useful responses from SC professionals of Pakistani firms, an important emerging economy context. The data were analysed with covariance-based structural equation modelling to statistically validate the model.FindingsThe analysis reveals several key findings: the presence of SCC has a direct, positive influence on SC resilience and SC robustness; while exploitation practices only partially mediate the nexus between SCC and SC resilience, they fully mediate the relationship between SCC and SC robustness; while exploration practices partially mediate the nexus between SCC and SC resilience, they do not mediate the relationship between SCC and SC robustness and SCC has a significant influence on SC resilience and SC robustness sequentially through exploitation and exploration (i.e. one after the other).Practical implicationsThese findings help to reconcile the exploitation versus exploration paradox in cultivating SC resilience and SC robustness in the presence of SCC. The findings assist SC managers in determining how to deploy their limited resources most effectively to enhance SC resilience and SC robustness while facing SCC.Originality/valueThe authors devise and empirically validate a unique framework that demonstrates how the presence of SCC works as a stimulus to build SC resilience and SC robustness.

PurposeThis systematic literature review analyzes the academic literature to understand SC risk and resilience across different organizational sizes and industries. The academic literature has well discussed the causes of supply chain (SC) risk events, the impact of SC disruptions, and associated plans for SC resilience. However, the literature remains fragmented on the role of two fundamental elements in achieving SC resilience: the firm's size and the firm's industry as firms' contingent factors. Therefore, it is important to investigate and highlight SC resilience differences by size and industry type to establish more resilient firms.Design/methodology/approachBuilding upon the contingent resource-based view of the firm, the authors posit that organizational factors such as size and industry sector have important roles in developing organizational resilience capabilities. This systematic literature review and analysis is based on the structural and systematic analysis of high-ranked peer-reviewed journal papers from January 2000 to June 2021 collected through three global scientific databases (i.e. ProQuest, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar) using relevant keywords.FindingsThis systematic literature review of 230 high-quality articles shows that SC risk events can be categorized into demand, supply, organizational, operational, environmental, and network/control risk events. This study suggests that the SC resilience plans developed by startups, small and mdium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and large organizations are not necessarily the same as those of large enterprises. While collaboration and networking and risk management are the most crucial resilience capabilities for all firms, applying lean and quality management principles and utilizing information technology are more crucial for SMEs. For large firms, knowledge management and contingency planning are more important.Originality/valueThis study provides a comprehensive review of the literature on SC resilience plans across different organizational sizes and industries, offering new insights into the nature and dynamics of startups', SMEs', and large enterprises' SC resilience in different industries. The study highlights the need for further investigation of SC risk and resilience for startups, SMEs, and different industries on a more detailed level using empirical data. This study’s findings have important implications for researchers and practitioners and guide the development of effective SC resilience strategies for different types of firms.

This paper will review the process a vertically integrated subsea equipment OEM took to implement Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) techniques in effort to satisfy API Specification Q1, 9th Edition risk assessment requirements. Through this paper, we will highlight the organization's implementation approach, challenges faced, and benefits expected including improved product quality, increased customer service level, and lower costs. Driven by recent changes in API Specification Q1, 9th Edition along with customer specific quality requirements, Dril-Quip desired to institute Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) processes across its diverse product line and global manufacturing footprint. APQP has been successfully deployed and adopted in many manufacturing industries including automotive, aerospace, and defense. In this paper, Dril-Quip will discuss how it defined APQP standards to fit the specific needs of the oil and gas industry and its approach to apply them to the full range of Dril-Quip products. We will discuss the cross-functional approach including development of Design Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (DFMECA) and Process Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (PFMECA) for subsea wellhead systems. Critical to that discussion will be a conversation about how Dril-Quip identified the Critical to Quality characteristics (CTQs) and the procedure by which these critical features were assimilated into Dril-Quip's Quality Management System. Additionally, this paper will highlight how APQP will help the organization improve product quality and thus unlock constrained manufacturing capacity. Traditional quality management processes used in the oil and gas industry rely heavily on quality control and inspection. As a result, manufacturing operations often generate a significant number of non-conformances and customers require witness and hold points to ensure product quality. APQP brings a more proactive approach to quality management starting with product design and carrying through product verification analysis and validation testing, manufacturing and product delivery; thus, reducing non-conformances. By reducing non-conformances and designing quality into the product and its production processes, overall product quality and customer confidence will improve eliminating the need for third party witness and unlocking trapped capacity. Equipment manufacturers who are able to unlock this capacity will in turn be able to increase production volumes, shorten lead times and reduce costs. While APQP is not a novel or new concept and has been successfully deployed in the automotive, aerospace, and defense industries, it brings a new approach to quality management in the oil and gas industry. The ultimate conclusion will focus on the reasons why APQP implementation at a vertically integrated OEM reduces costs, improves process efficiency, and achieves a vast quality improvement over previous models including highlighting benchmarks from improvements realized from implementing APQP in other industries.

Building resilience or maintaining robustness: Insights from relational view and information processing perspective

Purpose This paper aims to investigate current trends in sustainability and resilience in supply chains post the COVID-19 pandemic. With an increase in the number of pandemic-led supply chain disruptions in the past years, supply chain resilience has become a necessity in almost all global supply chains. At the same time, supply chains are being mandated to meet the sustainable development goals by considering all three pillars of sustainability, that is, people, planet and profits. The challenge faced by most supply chains is to incorporate both sustainability and resilience in their supply chains since the two have some conflicting objectives. The review investigated research on the integration of sustainability and resilience in closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs). CLSCs have become an important circular business model that contributes greatly to environmental sustainability. The disruption of CLSCs affects not only business as usual (forward chain) but also environmental and net zero initiatives. For this reason, it is necessary to study their resilience. Design/methodology/approach When conducting the review, the systematic method was used. In the systematic method, a research question was defined and studies on the topic were located and screened based on their contents. At the end of the screening, 56 publications were found to be relevant to the topic at hand. A content analysis was carried on the selected publications to come up with research gaps, recommendations and managerial implications for the integration of sustainability and resilience in CLSCs. The review investigated the levels of decision-making where resilience and sustainability can be integrated in CLSCs, the interrelationships between sustainability and resilience from the perspective of CLSCs and other supply chain issues that can be integrated with resilience and sustainability in CLSCs. Findings For CLSCs, the integration of sustainability and resilience was carried out mostly in the strategic level (mostly network design focusing on facility location and allocation). Most studies investigated the two principles separately, although there is a growing increase in literature investigating both principles simultaneously. In CLSCs, resilience has been investigated as a tool for achieving sustainability, as most research focused on the impact of resilience on sustainability dimensions. In addition, sustainability and resilience cannot co-exist without some trade-offs. It was also discovered that sustainability and resilience can be combined with other principles such as robustness, responsiveness, efficiency and reliability among other principles to improve supply chain networks. Originality/value The paper focused on simultaneous consideration of resilience and sustainability in CLSCs specifically. It also explored other supply chain issues associated with sustainability and resilience in CLSCs. The aim of the paper was to reveal interrelationships between resilience and sustainability in closed-loop supply chains. It has not been clear as to the relationship between resilience and sustainability from a CLSC perspective.

PurposeThis study aims to explore the relationships among the five components of supply chain (SC) resilience (SCRES): visibility, velocity, flexibility, robustness and collaboration and their impacts on the SC performance under disruption (SCPUD).Design/methodology/approachFive SCRES components are identified from the literature review and data are collected using an web survey from 113 manufacturing companies in Taiwan. The data are analyzed by structured equation modeling with the partial least square solution. Two-stage least-squares (2SLS) regression was used to test the potential endogeneity of SC collaboration (SCC).FindingsThe results reveal that SCC is an exogenous driver of SCRES; it directly affects visibility, velocity, flexibility, robustness and SCPUD. Furthermore, SC flexibility is the only component of SC agility that directly affects SCPUD; it is influenced directly by SC velocity and indirectly by SC visibility through SC velocity. SC visibility is a vital agility component that positively influences SC velocity and SC robustness.Research limitations/implicationsThe data in this study are cross-sectional and the sample size of 113 is relatively small. The relationship between SC robustness and SCPUD needs a longer observation period to reveal. The logistic issue in the shortage of carriers caused by the pandemic has been overlooked.Practical implicationsA firm should enhance its collaboration and flexibility in the SC as they both are the critical antecedents of SC performance (SCP) during the disruption period.Originality/valueThis study integrates visibility, velocity, flexibility, robustness and collaboration into a complete framework of SCRES. The dependent variable, SCPUD, measures SC performance (SCP) under the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the first study to investigate the associations of the six constructs in a research model.

Supply chain environmental risks are pivotal situational factors that significantly influence the intricate relationship between a business’s supply chain agility, supply chain resilience, and its ultimate supply chain performance. This study aims to explore the interplay between supply chain agility, supply chain resilience, and supply chain performance, while also investigating the moderating effect of supply chain environmental risks. Data analysis was conducted using hierarchical regression based on a questionnaire survey involving 416 companies in Taiwan’s manufacturing supply chain. The findings reveal several key insights. Firstly, supply chain agility has a positive influence on supply chain resilience, highlighting the importance of a flexible and responsive supply chain to handle challenges effectively. Secondly, supply chain resilience plays a vital role in determining supply chain performance, underscoring its significance in maintaining operational efficiency and effectiveness. Furthermore, the study identifies that supply chain environmental risks can act as a positive moderator in the relationship between supply chain agility and supply chain resilience. In other words, when faced with environmental risks, companies with higher supply chain agility can leverage this capability to reinforce their supply chain resilience, leading to improved supply chain performance. Additionally, the results shed light on the mediating role of supply chain resilience between supply chain agility and supply chain performance. This suggests that a resilient supply chain acts as an intermediary mechanism through which the positive effects of supply chain agility translate into enhanced overall performance. Given the uncertain and turbulent market environment today, these findings emphasize the importance of adopting supply chain agility and supply chain resilience as indispensable business strategies. Therefore, enterprise leaders and managers should proactively implement measures to enhance these aspects of their supply chain to effectively navigate and overcome environmental risks, ultimately driving supply chain performance.

This paper estimates the Most Productive Scale Size (MPSS) in the NDEA model to appraise the sustainability and resilience of the supply chains. As the corresponding input and output criteria are not always accurately measurable, we also introduce the fuzzy version of our proposed NDEA model and apply the proposed model in a case study involving 10 Iranian supply chains of Companies Producing Soft Drinks (CPSDs). The considered-three-echelon supply chains include suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors. Mathematical analysis proves that the MPSS of the considered supply chain can be decomposed as the sum of the MPSS values of the individual stages. Thus, the supply chain is overall MPSS if and only if it is MPSS in every three stages. The results of this study reveal that the Behnoush supply chain is overall MPSS in all three stages, including supplier, manufacturer, and distributor, for any α ∈ {0.1, 0.5, 1}. A sensitivity analysis has been performed to measure the impact of each criterion on the entire supply chain performance. The sensitivity analysis results indicate that the social and resilience criteria significantly impact the performance and ranking of supply chains. Finally, we discuss how to improve the sustainability and resilience of non-MPSS supply chains.

GP-12 (Early Production Containment) is a quality tool used by General Motors to ensure the conformity of its suppliers' products during the new product development process. The objective of the study is to show how the GP12 was implemented in a thermoplastic injection company in Joinville in the recently launched GEM project, verifying if the implementation of the GP12 can guarantee the shipment of components to the assemblers with zero defects, since the guarantee of the quality is a system required by automakers to maintain contracts with their suppliers. If, during the 90-day period, the supplier presents zero defects, then it will be qualified to meet the production requirements as specified in the PPAP (Production Part Approval Process). To support this study, a bibliographic review was carried out on the quality process adopted by General Motors, known as advanced product quality planning ("advanced product quality planning" - APQP). The study was carried out from the determination of the area manager, delimitation of the conogram, definition of the physical arrangement, analysis of the project products, operational training until the arrival of the departure of the GP12 of the items that were submitted by the anticipated containment. This work concluded that the tool was effective, since all the objectives were achieved within the launch period, reaching the level of quality required by the automakers, despite the appearance of some problems detected internally, the implemented action plans were robust, guaranteeing the compliance of the processes at the automaker, thus preventing any non-compliance in the cars during their launch.

This paper explores the direct impact of different types of supply chain integration on supply chain resilience in new energy vehicle manufacturing enterprises. It also elucidates the mediating role of supply chain risk management and the moderating role of regulatory uncertainty, proposing nine research hypotheses. Finally, it employs SPSS 26.0 software to analyze the research hypotheses using collected 309 sample data. The research results indicate the following: (1) Internal integration, supplier integration, and customer integration all positively influence supply chain resilience, with supplier integration having the most significant impact. (2) Supply chain risk management mediates the relationship between internal integration, supplier integration, customer integration, and supply chain resilience. (3) Regulatory uncertainty significantly negatively moderates the impact of internal integration and customer integration on supply chain resilience, but it does not significantly negatively moderate the impact of supplier integration on supply chain resilience.

New perspectives on supply chain resilience

Abstract: The continuous supply of foods to the people across various localities is always a challenging task in normal conditions, whereas in case of pandemic situations like Covid 19 it becomes most difficult due to various factors impacting upon operational efficiency of the supply chain. In case of crisis situations the response of the system particularly food supply chain to serve the needs of the society was evaluated in this paper. The resiliency of supply chain in food sector was studied and accordingly related literature reviewed. Indian supply chain challenges are unique in nature due to its bio-diversity and geographic location. The methodology adopted to study this resiliency of Indian food supply chain was through available literature review, and study of data related to food supply chain. The resiliency of food supply chain was identified based on the results of price stabilization over period of time and availability of supplies during succeeding stages of Covid 19 pandemic. The synchronization of activities involved in SCM to create value for the customers through options like information reliability, Quality standard checkpoints, transportation flexibility, adoption of technology etc. were proposed. Keywords: Pandemic, Covid 19, Food Supply Chain, Supply Chain Risks, Resilient Supply Chain, Supply Chain Network (SCN)

PurposeAs the construction industry transforms towards green and low-carbon development, prefabricated buildings (PBs) have become the mainstream trend of industry development with their significant advantages of environmental protection, high efficiency and resource conservation. However, the prefabricated building supply chain (PBSC) faces many risks and challenges in actual operation, which pose a serious threat to the stability and sustainable development of the supply chain (SC). Taking the PB project of Enterprise J as an example, this paper deeply explores the risk propagation mechanism in its SC and proposes a practical risk control strategy, aiming to enhance the risk resistance and resilience of the SC and ensure its sustainable development.Design/methodology/approachBased on the actual contract data of Enterprise J, this study constructed a four-layer PBSC network model, covering PB contractors, material suppliers, module manufacturers, and PB construction enterprises. By identifying and evaluating the main risk factors in the SC, combined with the improved Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation method and the cloud-matter element evaluation model, the weight and vulnerability of each risk factor were analyzed. MATLAB R2022b software was further used to simulate the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered-Susceptible (SIRS) model to analyze the impact of different risk control strategies on risk propagation.FindingsThis study analyzed the PBSC network of J Company and found that it has high connectivity and low group characteristics, which promotes the rapid spread of risks. SIRS model analysis shows that the infection rate is most sensitive to risk transmission, and a higher infection rate accelerates the spread, emphasizing the importance of controlling the initial infection rate. The recovery rate significantly affects the speed of risk transmission, while the immune extinction rate affects the long-term stability of the SC. The betweenness centrality strategy based on betweenness centrality performs well in controlling risk transmission, and can effectively reduce the number of infected enterprises and shorten the recovery time. The study also found that PB contractors and material suppliers are key links and are prone to become the source of risk transmission; while module manufacturers and PB construction enterprise show strong risk resistance.Practical implicationsThis study provides a new theoretical framework and practical strategy for risk management of PBSC of enterprise J, helping enterprises to identify key risk nodes and effectively control risk propagation through reasonable immunization strategies, thereby enhancing the stability and resilience of the SC. The research results provide strong support for coping with external uncertainties and technological changes, and promote the healthy development of enterprise J.Originality/valueThis study takes the PBSC network of J Company as an empirical object, deeply analyzes its risk propagation mechanism and control strategy, and has significant academic innovation and practical value. By constructing a four-layer weighted directed network model that conforms to the actual operation of the enterprise, and combining the SIRS model for dynamic simulation analysis, this study reveals the key impact of infection rate, recovery rate and immune extinction rate on SC risk propagation, and provides a new perspective and theoretical basis for J Company’s SC risk management. In particular, the betweenness immunization strategy based on betweenness centrality, as an innovative solution, provides a practical path for enterprises to identify and control key risk nodes. The study also further analyzes the vulnerability and recovery capacity of different levels, and proposes targeted strategies to enhance the resilience and risk resistance of the enterprise SC. This study not only enriches the theoretical framework of J Company’s SC risk management, but also provides an operational practical guide for it to improve the stability of the SC and cope with the challenges of external uncertainty.