Supply Chain Disruption Management Research Articles

Building an antifragile supply chain: A capability blueprint for resilience and post‐disruption growth

AbstractConsiderable research has focused on how supply chains can better handle disruptions. Consequently, concepts such as supply chain robustness and engineering resilience have emerged, with the dominant emphasis being that disruptions are a wholly bad thing to be avoided or resisted. However, recent discourse in the supply chain disruption management literature, such as the social–ecological interpretation of supply chain resilience, suggests that disruptions can be positioned more positively as potential catalysts for growth. Yet little is known about the capabilities required for a supply chain to grow following disruption. The emerging concept of supply chain antifragility focuses specifically on growth, providing an arrowhead for investigating what enables firms to grow following disruption. Utilizing a metaphorical transfer method, this research translates the capabilities of individuals—those who grow psychologically and emotionally after experiencing trauma—into supply chain capabilities that enhance antifragility. Five key capabilities for building antifragility in supply chains are identified: supply chain mindfulness, supply chain transformative learning, supply chain plasticity, supply chain bricolage, and supply chain collaboration. Furthermore, a hierarchy of capabilities is revealed that points to a sequential approach to capitalizing on the potential growth opportunities presented by supply chain disruptions. The findings are sense‐checked through focus groups with practitioners, informing the development of five propositions. This research contributes to theory development on handling supply chain disruptions by providing a capability blueprint for post‐disruption growth that complements the literature on social–ecological supply chain resilience. Finally, this research highlights the value of metaphorical transfer as an innovative approach for understanding contemporary supply chain phenomena and advancing novel theoretical frameworks.

COVID-19 and Supply Chain Disruption Management: A Behavioural Economics Perspective and Future Research Direction

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most severe disruptions to normal life, impacting how businesses operate. The academic literature in the areas of supply chain and operations management has been trying to explain how this has affected decision-making in businesses. However, the existing literature has predominantly overlooked organisational culture and behavioural economic theories. This paper contends that considering the decisions made in supply chain disruption management involve groups and the individuals within them, the relevance of behavioural economic concepts becomes paramount. As such, the objective of this paper is to conduct an integrative literature review, utilising the purposive sampling method to explore the dearth of academic work connecting behavioural economic theories and organisational culture to supply chain disruption management. Additionally, the paper aims to offer guidelines for future research in this domain. Enhancing our comprehension of these domains concerning supply chain disruption management would empower firms to better anticipate their parties’ decisions, refine their decision-making models, and cultivate stronger relationships with suppliers and customers.

Let’s talk about bad experiences instead of forgetting them: An empirical study on the importance of memory for supply chain disruption management

Few studies have been concerned about the role of previous knowledge in supply chain disruption management. Based on the premise that supply chain resilience and robustness impact supply chain performance, this paper aims to expand this knowledge by conceptually and empirically establishing the role of supply chain memory for supply chain disruption management performance. A survey receiving 290 valid responses was conducted with supply chain managers. Quantitative data were analyzed with structural equation modeling. In addition, a mixed-methods approach was conducted to validate and explore the quantitative results. This paper contributes to theory and practice showing that experience, familiarity, and knowledge about dealing with disruptions improve supply chain resilience and robustness efficiency. The moderation effect of memory reveals that high memory leverages the impact of supply chain resilience on supply chain performance. Moreover, it brings important insights into the impact of robustness on supply chain performance since it is conditional to memory levels. The full model was able to explain 37.19% of supply chain performance.

Barriers to supply chain performance measurement during disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeAmid the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), supply chains have faltered. This has influenced operational and financial performance and lead to uncertainty in supply and distribution. Therefore, systems measuring supply chain risk and disruption management performance have gained interest. This study explores barriers to supply chain performance measurement during disruptions such as COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachBased on a survey and literature review, the authors formalise the barriers and rank them using the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) fuzzy Višekriterijumsko kompromisno rangiranje (VIKOR) methodology. A total of 14 experts in 11 countries were surveyed. Performance measurement is based on a balanced scorecard.FindingsFifteen barriers are identified. Based on DEMATEL analysis, the cause–effect relationships among the four scorecard aspects are explored. The customer axis is revealed as the cause, while the financial, internal business and learning/development are identified as the effect of the supply chain performance measurement. Fuzzy VIKOR calculations show that uncertainty of investment, disrupted cash flows and the bullwhip effect are the most critical barriers to measure supply chain performance during outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic.Research limitations/implicationsThe study identifies and ranks general barriers; additional research is required to differentiate barriers in specific industrial sectors.Practical implicationsThe findings may help develop proactive, resilient supply chain performance strategies to overcome disruptions.Social implicationsPolicy-makers and decision-makers in industrial and service firms can explore these findings to inform strategies for robust supply chains that can resist disruption in risky environments.Originality/valueThis research addresses a knowledge gap in barriers to measure supply chain performance in post-pandemic areas. It is unclear how far firms will measure supply chain performance in terms of learning from disruption patterns, managing financial and customer demand processes in light of COVID-19. This study contributes by explaining the influences among the barriers and exploring them, offering insights from multiple stakeholders.

Catastrophe insurance and flexible planning for supply chain disruption management: a stochastic simulation case study

Catastrophe-related insurance (e.g. business interruption insurance) is an effective financing tool for global corporations to reduce economic losses caused by high impact events. Flexible operational planning is an often-used tool enabling rapid adjustment of operational plans for reducing catastrophe-related damage costs. The interaction between catastrophe insurance and flexible operations planning has rarely been studied. In this paper, we develop a stochastic programming model for a multi-echelon global supply chain network that we solve to investigate the impact of purchasing catastrophe insurance on supply chain operational planning in a catastrophe-prone environment. Computational simulations are developed for evaluating solution quality and measuring catastrophe-related damage costs. We find that it may be optimal for supply chains to scrap redundant products in catastrophes when customer demand falls below the expected level. Purchasing catastrophe insurance may encourage supply chains to scrap more products, which results in more catastrophe-related damages. From analysing supply chain costs, catastrophe-related damage costs, and operational plans, we find that a higher compensation rate of catastrophe insurance triggers more production activities being planned at the vulnerable node just before the vulnerable time period, especially for low residual value products. Finally, we give managerial insights to help reduce unnecessary damages in catastrophes.

Application of Machine Learning algorithms in Supply Chain Disruption Management: An Indian MSME Perspective

Application of Machine Learning algorithms in Supply Chain Disruption Management: An Indian MSME Perspective

COVID-19 and emerging markets: A strategic framework for pharmaceutical supply chains

The main aim of this study is to develop a strategic framework to address COVID-19-induced supply chain disruptions within the South African pharmaceutical industry. This study explores the perceptions of 25 pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) professionals in South Africa. Using semi-structured interviews, the study elucidates strategies such as research and development (R&D), marketing strategies, collaborative supply chain disruption management, and local production that can be instrumental in overcoming PSC disruptions. Results underscore the importance of local R&D initiatives and the integration of digital technologies for enhanced resilience (Ivanov & Dolgui, 2020a; Paul & Chowdhury, 2021). Effective communication, local manufacturing, and strong relationships with suppliers and customers were highlighted as key marketing strategies. Collaborative approaches, including information sharing and joint planning, were deemed crucial, along with the potential of local production to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers (Ivanov, 2020; Socal et al., 2021). This strategic framework can significantly contribute to mitigating the impact of COVID-19 and future disruptions on PSCs in South Africa and other emerging markets. This research contributes a practical, industry-informed strategic framework that addresses a major gap in managing PSC disruptions during global crises. Further research is required to explore the specific interventions and policies that facilitate these strategies (Modisakeng et al., 2020).

The missing link in disruption management research: coping

The COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that the impact of supply chain disruptions on different organizations may vary widely. Even if different levels of capabilities (agility, adaptability, etc.) may have contributed to the differential in outcomes, organizations need to learn how to harness their capabilities effectively in the face of disruptions. Although there is vast literature on supply chain disruption management, risk management, and resilience, we are not aware of any theory that comprehensively explains the decision-making process for managing disruptions. We argue that coping theory can explain how organizations may channelize resources based on two stages of appraisal to handle long- and short-term disruptions. Borrowing from psychology, we adapt coping theory to disruption management for any organization in any industry. In this paper, we demonstrate how supply chain coping strategies may explain outcomes of several organizations from different industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that organizations may sustain and even thrive if they adopt the right coping strategies in their context. We present our thesis using the following three themes: (1) We first identify potential demand trajectories organizations may follow during and after the pandemic, (2) We explain how coping strategies adopted by organizations may impact these trajectories, and (3) We present a framework to help the decision makers understand potential positive impact the coping strategies may bring to their organizations in future crises.

Coping in supply chains: a conceptual framework for disruption management

PurposeThe Covid-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of global supply chains. Attempts to deepen our understanding of the effects of the pandemic on global supply chains mostly offer anecdotal evidences and lack theory grounded research. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to help explain supply chain disruption management.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper and uses a theory building approach. It develops a conceptual framework adapted from coping theory in psychology to explain supply chain disruption management. To refine the framework, the authors independently reviewed extant supply chain disruption management literature. The authors then studied the frameworks on stress theory in psychology. Following the review of both streams of literatures, the authors developed an initial draft of the conceptual model. This draft was then iteratively refined through extensive discussions among the authors.FindingsCoping theory can help revise supply chain disruption management with an alternative lens that has not been applied before in this domain. The proposed conceptual framework is generic and can be applied to disruption management strategies for any organization in any industry.Originality/valueThe conceptual framework proposed in this paper offers a new theoretical lens to supply chain disruption management discourse. It contributes to the operational understanding of supply chain disruption management.

The PPE industry in Italy during COVID-19: supply chain disruption and the adoption of digital and social media in B2B firms

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze how the personal protective equipment (PPE) industry managed supply chain and business relationships disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the adoption of digital and social media during the period of crisis management.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology used is qualitative based on 14 interviews with 11 PPE firms operating in Italy, the first Western country that implemented a national lockdown during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.FindingsFindings suggest that although most PPE companies in Italy have been slow in implementing digital transformation, digital technologies and communication enhanced existing assets and capabilities creating new customer value during the COVID-19 outbreak. The pandemic has increased the relevance of social media as an effective tool in the business-to-business (B2B) context to provide updated information and training, as well as to reinforce and personalize business relationships, weakened by the lack of physical contacts during the lockdown. Moreover, highly interdependent buyer–supplier relations can increase supply chain resilience to disruptions in mutually dependent relationships/partnerships.Research limitations/implicationsBy analyzing the main issues encountered during the pandemic and the digital strategies adopted by PPE companies, this study seeks to extend B2B literature on supply chain disruption management and digitalization. The limitations refer to the study’s generalizability as a limited number of firms are analyzed.Practical implicationsImplications for B2B companies and policymakers are provided with the extent of managing supply chain disruptions during emergency situations such as COVID-19 pandemic, when collaboration between different actors involved become essential.Originality/valueNo previous studies have analyzed how PPE firms used digital and social media in managing disruption in supply chain and business relationships. Therefore, the present study contributes to extend the B2B literature by analyzing the related effects during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Global Supply Chain Disruption Management Post Covid 19

This study demonstrates this pandemic as absolute catastrophic, which has distracted the overall supply chain activities, with significant shortcomings for businesses, consumers, and the overall global economy. Though in a regular time, it has been extremely challenging to ensure seamless supply chain operations, and senior management had to struggle to respond to critical uncertainties to protect their employees, safeguard supply security, alleviate the financial collision, tackle reputational risks, and steer the market uncertainty. The life-threatening virus has not only caused disaster in our healthcare system but also has destroyed the global economy. During this global economic turbulence, the world’s economy, including Bangladesh’s economy uncovers itself in an unbearable state, particularly due to slumping apparel exports, declining remittances, increasing job losses, and unpredictable consumer demand. Even before the pandemic, managing seamless supply chain operations were highly challenging and stressful. For many years, multinational corporations pursued to aggressively optimize cost through economies of scale, frequently by relocating production facilities to lower-cost labor regions—opted at the expense of other critical supply chain attributes like flexibility and agility. In the meantime, enterprises and governments have occupied in business continuity and resilient supply chain management planning exercises in recent years, outdated risk management undertakings have largely involved responding to national events relating to a specific geography or sector. The current global disruptions emphasize the importance of a new paradigm to improve supply chain resilience at a significant level. Finally, the study classified ten supply chain performance measurement attributes to diagnose the performance and efficiency of an organization. This study illustrates critical challenges and the urgency of the revalidation to be needed in our strategic framework, thus the study emphasizes the importance of comprehensive performance measurement attributes. This study also demonstrates an Integrated Supply Chain Performance Measurement (ISCPM) model connected to these attributes that can supersede the currently practiced models which are not sufficient to address all the issues in the current context.

Multiple strategies for supply chain to recover from major disruptions

Today’s supply chains have a greater likelihood of disruption risks than ever before. Sometimes, a lengthy recovery period is needed for supply chains to return to regular operation after being disrupted. During the recovery time window, how to increase the performance of supply chains is not sufficiently studied. Furthermore, the works considering parameter uncertainty arising from the lack of historical data are also limited. To address these problems, we formulate the recovery scheduling of supply chains under major disruption as mixed-integer linear programming models. In the presented models, outsourcing strategy and capacity expansion strategy are introduced to increase the service level of the supply chain after the disruption. The effects of disruption risks on supply chain performance are quantified using uncertainty theory in the absence of historical data. A set of computational examples illustrate that cost may increase markedly when more facilities are disrupted simultaneously. Thus, decision-makers have to pay close attention to supply chain disruption management and plan for disruption in advance. Moreover, the results suggest that outsourcing strategy is more useful to reduce cost when a higher service level is required.

Investigation of Disruption Management Practices and Environmental Impact on Malaysian Automotive Supply Chains: A Case Study Approach

Much focus on managing a supply chain in the event of disruption has been on the financial consequences and the service level impact on the customers. The negative impact caused by the disruption could influence a company’s profit and market share. Nonetheless, the importance of the environmental impact consideration in the supply chain disruption management has not been emphasised in the existing literature despite research findings that highlight the impact of some resilient supply chain practices on its environmental sustainability. This paper aims to assess the relationship between supply chain mitigation and recovery practices and its environmental impact. To achieve this objective, a case study was employed where semi-structured interviews were conducted at selected automotive companies in Malaysia. The results show that most disruption mitigation and recovery practices of a supply chain have a medium impact on its environmental performance. In particular, the production process during supply disruption recovery has the highest influence on environmental performance in the form of waste generation and use of energy. The results of this study can be used by supply chain managers to focus their efforts in the right direction in order to achieve cost objectives, service levels and environmental goals during the management of disruptions.

Do not expect others do what you should! Supply chain complexity and mitigation of the ripple effect of disruptions

PurposeRecent studies have argued that companies may actively implement practices to mitigate disruptions in their supply chain and reduce the extent of damage on performance. Other studies have shown that disruptions may propagate in supply chains, leading to consequences that are more negative and raising doubts on the effectiveness of mitigation strategies implemented downstream. This study investigates the influence of supply chain complexity on the two phenomena and their interplay, taking a focal company's perspective.Design/methodology/approachA systematic procedure for data collection, encoding and aggregation based on incident data mainly from secondary sources was used. Multiple regression models were run to analyse direct and moderation effects involving resilience, distance of impact location from trigger point, and supply chain complexity on weighted performance change.FindingsSupply chain complexity is found to have positive moderation on the ripple effect of disruption. Resilience capability remains to have dominating direct positive effect in mitigating disruptions when supply chain complexity is taken into account.Research limitations/implicationsThis study extends the research discourse on supply chain resilience and disruption management with focus on the supply side. It demonstrates that, along with the severity of the disruption scenario, the ripple effect must also be considered when analyzing the benefits of resilience practices implemented by the focal company.Practical implicationsComplexity in the supply chain can only help to smooth-out the rippling effects of a disruption, which go largely beyond supply-demand unbalances and lead time fluctuations. To mitigate it better, the focal company has to act proactively with adequate resilience practices, which also connects to the importance of better visibility across multiple supply chain tiers.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that empirically tests the benefits of resilience practices and the ripple effect of disruptions under the moderation role of supply chain complexity.

Theory Building on Supply Chain Resilience: A SAP–LAP Analysis

Supply chain (SC) disruption management is a complex issue that involves building SC resilience through enhancing the organizational ability to anticipate, adapt, respond, recover and learn from disruptions; it needs participation and coordinated efforts of all SC stakeholders and their processes. There is a need for a qualitative, interpretive, holistic and flexible framework in the literature. The main purpose of this work is to propose a framework. Therefore, the present study uses an interpretive method, namely “situation–actor–process–learning–action–performance” (SAP–LAP) analysis, to enhance the understanding and analyze the SC resilience building and improvement in the case company, ABC, a prominent automaker in India. Findings reveal several issues, including the establishment of risk management culture, building collaborative capabilities, framing flexible contracts, enhancing the awareness level of risks, security, and resilience among stakeholders, seamless information sharing, require attention. The efficacy and simplicity of the SAP–LAP framework may enable SC stakeholders to initiate resilience-building processes.

Using Disruptive Innovation for Disaster Mitigation and Ensuring Supply Chain Continuity

Supply chains are a network of intertwined nodes and routes that are normally expected to operate smoothly and allow for seamless movement of material, documentation and information two and fro its entirety. Such large networks spread over a wide area on a global scale are bound to be affected by disruptive factors both natural as well as man-made. Though some amount of research has been done on supply chain disruption, mitigation efforts, risk management, etc. a proper linkage is normally missing. Also very little research has been done on continuity. This paper does a selective literature review of selected papers covering various areas of supply chain disruption management under exogenous shock conditions like natural disasters and solutions and links the recent innovation of drone technology to disaster recovery and mitigation efforts and ensuring supply chain continuity. While commercial drones are under test usage by variety of organizations, this paper also assesses certain selected drone types for their compatibility and future modified usage in disaster recovery and supply chain continuity after natural disasters.

Integrated detection of disruption scenarios, the ripple effect dispersal and recovery paths in supply chains

The studies on supply chain (SC) disruption management frequently assume the existence of some negative scenarios and suggest ways to proactively protect and reactively recover the SC operations and performance if such scenarios occur. Though, there is a paucity of research on how to support methodologically the detection of realistic disruption scenarios, ideally of different risk aversion degrees. The contribution of our study lies in a conceptualization of a new methodical approach to the detection of disruption scenarios, ripple effect dispersal and recovery paths in supply chains on the basis of structural genomes. The objective is to integrate and expand the existing knowledge gained isolated in robustness analysis and recovery planning into a comprehensive framework for building a theory as well as for managerial purposes. The outcomes of this research constitute a useful decision-making support tool that allows detecting disruption scenarios at different risk-aversion levels based on the quantification of the structural robustness with the use of the genome method and observing the scope of disruption propagation, i.e., the ripple effect. The advantage of using a robustness computation by the genome method is that this allows detecting both the disruption scenarios of different severity, the ripple effect dispersal, and the corresponding recovery paths. Our results can be of value for decision-makers to compare different supply chain structural designs regarding the robustness and to identify disruption scenarios that interrupt the supply chain operations to different extents. The scenario detection can be further used for identifying optimal reconfiguration paths to deploy proactive contingency and reactive recovery policies. We show a correlation between the risk aversion degree of disruption scenarios and the outcomes of the reconfiguration policies.

Effect of disruption risk on a supply chain with price-dependent demand

Supply chain disruption management has been a hot issue for a long time. This paper studies a supply chain consisting of two suppliers and a retailer. The suppliers may have correlated disruption risks and they choose their respective wholesale price. The retailer's demand is selling price-dependent. In a scenario of ex-ante pricing scheme, i.e., the retailer chooses selling price before the suppliers' disruption is resolved, we find that the disruption correlation affects the supply chain members' profits in a nonmonotonic way. In a scenario of responsive pricing scheme, i.e., the retailer chooses selling price after the suppliers' disruption is resolved, we show that when the suppliers' disruption correlation becomes stronger, the suppliers' profit will decrease while the retailer's profit will increase. Moreover, the retailer always earns a higher profit under the responsive pricing scheme than under the ex-ante pricing scheme. In an extension, we show that the suppliers' disruption correlations affects the supply chain members' profits in a similar way if the supply chain has two competitive retailers. However, in this extension, if the suppliers' disruption correlation is low, the retailers' profit is higher under the responsive pricing scheme; otherwise, the retailers' profit is higher under the ex-ante pricing scheme.

Learning from near-miss events: An organizational learning perspective on supply chain disruption response

Studying near-miss events – occasions when a company comes close to being negatively impacted – can help identify systemic issues and thereby enhance organizational resilience. However, what is not known is how firms learn from near-miss events, and how their learning is translated into response strategies in the face of supply chain disruptions. In this study, we address the following research questions - How does exposure to near-misses reflect in organizational response strategies to supply chain disruptions? Using single and double-loop learning from organizational learning theory, we examine how firms implement response strategies based on near-miss events. In addition, we examine the moderating effects of institutional pressures (from regulatory bodies and industry associations) into the model. We test the hypotheses using responses from 448 organizations in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden. Our results indicate that exposure to near-miss events leads firms to strengthen their focus on procedural response strategies and to lower their focus on flexible response strategies. Industry pressure furthers the effects of near-miss exposure in applying procedural strategies and limiting the application of flexible strategies. Regulatory pressure furthers the effects of near-miss exposure in limiting the application of flexible strategies. This study extends the body of supply chain disruption management to the concept of near-misses and explains how institutional context play a major role in learning of supply chain disruption responses.

A supervised machine learning approach to data-driven simulation of resilient supplier selection in digital manufacturing

There has been an increased interest in resilient supplier selection in recent years, much of it focusing on forecasting the disruption probabilities. We conceptualize an entirely different approach to analyzing the risk profiles of supplier performance under uncertainty by utilizing the data analytics capabilities in digital manufacturing. Digital manufacturing peculiarly challenge the supplier selection by the dynamic order allocations, and opens new opportunities to exploit the digital data to improve sourcing decisions. We develop a hybrid technique, combining simulation and machine learning and examine its applications to data-driven decision-making support in resilient supplier selection. We consider on-time delivery as an indicator for supplier reliability, and explore the conditions surrounding the formation of resilient supply performance profiles. We theorize the notions of risk profile of supplier performance and resilient supply chain performance. We show that the associations of the deviations from the resilient supply chain performance profile with the risk profiles of supplier performance can be efficiently deciphered by our approach. The results suggest that a combination of supervised machine learning and simulation, if utilized properly, improves the delivery reliability. Our approach can also be of value when analyzing the supplier base and uncovering the critical suppliers, or combinations of suppliers the disruption of which result in the adverse performance decreases. The results of this study advance our understanding about how and when machine learning and simulation can be combined to create digital supply chain twins, and through these twins improve resilience. The proposed data-driven decision-making model for resilient supplier selection can be further exploited for design of risk mitigation strategies in supply chain disruption management models, re-designing the supplier base or investing in most important and risky suppliers.