Modelling and improvement of supply chain with imprecise transportation delays and resilience factors

Performance evaluation model of transportation infrastructure: Perspective of COVID-19

The transportation systems are facing major challenges due to changes social environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. How to construct a suitable evaluation criterion system and suitable assessment method to evaluate the status of the urban transportation resilience has become a predicament nowadays. Firstly, the criteria for evaluating the current state of transportation resilience involve many aspects. New features of transportation resilience under epidemic normalization are exposed, and previous summaries focusing on resilience characteristics under natural disasters can hardly reflect the current state of urban transportation resilience comprehensively. Based on this, this paper attempts to incorporate the new criteria (Dynamicity, Synergy, Policy) into the evaluation system. Secondly, the assessment of urban transportation resilience involves numerous indicators, which make it difficult to obtain quantitative figures for the criteria. With this background, a comprehensive multi-criteria assessment model based on q-rung orthopair 2-tuple linguistic sets is constructed to evaluate the status of transportation infrastructure from perspective on the COVID-19. Then, an example of urban transportation resilience is given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach. Subsequently, sensitivity analysis about parameters and global robust sensitivity analysis are conducted, and comparative analysis of existing method is given. The results reveal that the proposed method is sensitive to global criteria weights, so it is suggested that more attention should be paid to the rationality of the weight of criteria to avoid the influence on the results when solving MCDM problems. Finally, the policy implications regarding transport infrastructure resilience and appropriate model development are given.

Effect of supply chain resilience on firm's sustainable competitive advantage: a dynamic capability perspective

Supply chain disruption caused by environmental uncertainty makes it more difficult for firms to obtain sustainable competitive advantages (SCA). Based on the perspective of dynamic capability, this study explored the effect of three dimensions of supply chain resilience (SCR) (proactive capabilities, reactive capabilities and supply chain design quality) on SCA. In addition, we further adopted operational vulnerability (OV) as a mediated variable to construct a conceptual framework and propose research hypotheses. The theoretical hypotheses were empirically developed based on a survey of 305 firms in China's manufacturing industry and subsequently tested. Our findings indicate that taking proactive action, properly configuring supply chain systems, and developing rapid reaction capabilities to recover from disruptions provide companies an opportunity to improve and to obtain SCA. Finally, the paper offers managers a management framework and dynamic strategy with which to develop SCR and alleviate the negative impact of OV, thus contributing to a firm's SCA.

Robustness and resilience of supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic

Using a unique firm-level data set from Asia, this study examines what determined the robustness and resilience of supply chain links, that is, the ability of maintaining links and recovering disrupted links by substitution, respectively, when firms faced economic shocks due to the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We find that a supply chain link was likely to be robust if the link was between a foreign-owned firm and a firm located in the foreign-owned firm's home country, implying that homophily on a certain dimension generates strong ties and thus supply chain robustness. We also find that firms with geographic diversity of customers and suppliers tended to increase their transaction volume with one partner while decreasing the volume with others. This evidence shows that firms with diversified customers and suppliers are resilient, mitigating the damage from supply chain disruption through the substitution of partners. Furthermore, the robustness and resilience of supply chains are found to have led to higher performance.

Operationalizing resilience through collaboration: the case of Sri Lankan tea supply chain during Covid-19

This paper investigates the impact of subcomponents of collaboration: information sharing, connectivity, coordination, integration, and visibility on the tea supply chain resilience of Sri Lanka during the Covid-19 pandemic. This research was carried out with mixed methods. The quantitative approach adopted a systematic random sampling technique to determine the sample size (n = 137), whereas the qualitative study used the purposive sampling technique to determine the sample size (n = 6). Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to tea supply chain professionals and structured interviews were conducted to collect data for the qualitative approach of the study. This study found that all the subcomponents of collaboration positively impacted on tea supply chain resilience during the Covid-19. Moreover, connectivity and coordination have the highest positive impact on tea supply chain resilience while the other three sub-components: information sharing, integration and visibility have significant but relatively less positive impact on supply chain resilience. Thus, tea exporting companies must prioritise, take action steps for enhancing connectivity and coordination when formulating supply chain strategies to enable supply chain resilience. The study being one of the latest empirical studies taking Sri Lankan tea supply chain as a case study, contributes to the knowledge having identified the impact of sub-components of collaboration on tea supply chain resilience during Covid-19. Sri Lanka is one of the most vulnerable middle-income countries and its economy suffered severely during the Covid-19 outbreak. The findings will be supportive in making tea supply chains much stronger, providing a robust contribution to the country's GDP as part of Sri Lanka's national efforts in economic rebuilding.

The Impact of Climate Change on Urban Transportation Resilience to Compound Extreme Events

Global warming, sea-level rise, and rapid urbanization all increase the risk of compound extreme weather events, presenting challenges for the operation of urban-related infrastructure, including transportation infrastructure. In this context, some questions become important. For example, what are the temporal and spatial distribution and development trends of transportation resilience when considering the impact of multilpe extreme weather events on the urban transportation system? What is the degree of loss of urban transportation resilience (UT resilience) under different extreme event intensities, and how long will it take for the entire system to restore balance? In the future, if extreme weather events become more frequent and intense, what trends will urban transportation resilience show? Considering these problems, the current monitoring methods for transportation resilience under the influence of extreme events are lacking, especially the monitoring of the temporal and spatial dynamic changes of transportation resilience under the influence of compined extreme events. The development of big data mining technology and deep learning methods for spatiotemporal predictions made the construction of spatiotemporal data sets for evaluating and predicting UT resilience-intensity indicators possible. Such data sets reveal the temporal and spatial features and evolution of UT resilience intensity under the influence of compound extreme weather events, as well as the related future change trends. They indicate the key research areas that should be focused on, namely, the transportation resilience under climate warming. This work is especially important in planning efforts to adapt to climate change and rising sea levels and is relevant to policymakers, traffic managers, civil protection managers, and the general public.

Preparing supply chain for the next disruption beyond COVID-19: managerial antecedents of supply chain resilience

Purpose

COVID-19 once again showed the importance of building resilience in supply chains. Extant research on supply chain resilience management has successfully identified a set of organizational antecedents that contribute to supply chain resilience. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which these antecedents are developed within a firm. Drawing on the dynamic managerial capabilities theory, the current study aims to investigate the critical role that supply chain managers play in developing the organizational antecedents. Specifically, this study shows that supply chain managers' social capital, human capital and cognition are instrumental to the development of three organizational supply chain resilience antecedents: visibility, responsiveness and flexibility, which subsequently enhance the firm's supply chain resilience.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors employ survey data collected from 598 manufacturing firms in Australia, and Hayes and Preacher's (2014) parallel multiple mediator model to empirically test the hypotheses.

Findings

The findings of the study establish that supply chain managers' social capital, human capital and cognition indeed have implications for developing supply chain resilience. Furthermore, the mediators through which managers' social capital, human capital and cognition improve supply chain resilience are identified in the current study.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the extant literature on supply chain resilience, investigating the role that supply chain managers play in developing the resilience of their firm.

An integrated quality and resilience engineering framework in healthcare with Z-number data envelopment analysis

Supplier selection for medical equipment is a major challenge for hospitals in healthcare supply chains. The primary reason for measuring medical equipment supplier efficiency is to achieve the highest level of overall performance and productivity in healthcare supply chains. This study presents an integrated quality and resilience engineering (QRE) framework for evaluating medical equipment suppliers' performance using structural equation modeling and Z-number data envelopment analysis (Z-DEA). Noise analysis is used to select the best α-cut for the Z-DEA model, and fuzzy data are used to handle uncertainties. We show that flexibility, conformance to standards, redundancy, cost, quality certifications, and delivery time significantly affect the medical equipment suppliers' performance. In addition, we demonstrate that the proposed integrated QRE framework is more efficient and informative than stand-alone quality engineering or resiliency engineering. We present a case study in a cardiovascular hospital to illustrate the applicability of the proposed framework for medical equipment supplier evaluation and selection. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to integrate QRE and Z-DEA for supplier performance evaluation in healthcare.

Supply chain integration and resilience in China's pig sector: case study evidences from emerging institutional arrangements

Pig sector in China is faced with high risks, such as price fluctuation and food safety, and environmental regulation uncertainty. The recent African swine fever has caused public panic and drop down of pork consumption in a short term. The "wu-shui-gong-zhi" policy is a newly recognized environmental policy risk, and its key content is to shut down directly the pig farms close to water resources. Lots of small- and medium-sized farms have been affected, especially in coastal provinces. Supply chain integration received wide attention in supply chain management. Literature has shown that a well-coordinated food supply chain will bring positive outcomes for chain stakeholders. However, the relationship between food supply chain integration and resilience is not empirically captured. This research aims to explore the relationship between supply chain integration and supply chain resilience, and the mechanism of how supply chain integration works on supply chain resilience. To achieve the research purpose, an in-depth ethnographical case study is performed. Four cases in China's pig sector were selected, with different types of supply chain integration between cooperative and companies. They differ in supply chain resilience levels. We found that supply chain integration has a positive effect on supply chain resilience through agility and robustness. Supply chain agility also has positive relationship with supply chain robustness. It implies that supply chain stakeholders should efficiently exchange information, enhance circulation rate, and jointly make plans to be more resilient to risks. The government needs to make policies to encourage and facilitate supply chain integration among supply chain members to enhance supply chain resilience.

A New DEA Model for Evaluation of Supply Chains: A Case of Selection and Evaluation of Environmental Efficiency of Suppliers

Supply Chain Management (SCM) represents an example of a complex multi-stage system. The SCM involves and connects different activities, from customer’s orders to received services, all with the aim of satisfying customers. The evaluation of a particular SCM is a complex problem because of the internally linked hierarchical activities and multiple entities. In this paper, the introduction of a non-radial DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) model for the evaluation of different components of SCM, primarily in terms of sustainability, is the main contribution. However, in order to confirm the novelty and benefits of this new model in the field of SCM, a literature review of past applications of DEA-based models and methods are also presented. The non-radial DEA model was applied for the selection and evaluation of the environmental efficiency of suppliers considering undesirable inputs and outputs resulting in a better ranking of suppliers. Via perturbation of the data used, behavior, as well as the benefits and weaknesses of the introduced model are presented through sensitivity analysis.