Supply Chains and the Black Swan of 2020: building resiliency as a response to Covid-19

Abstract

At the beginning of 2020, the outbreak of the Covid-19 disease has caught off-guard the entire world. The series of precautionary measures imposed by governments worldwide have caused disruptions not only in local but also in global supply chains. As a consequence, scholars have been trying to identify effective resilience strategies to mitigate the impacts caused on supply chains by the Covid-19. However, the extant literature provides organizations only with general recommendations on how to increase supply chain resilience, not taking into consideration the distinct impacts that Covid-19 has had on different supply chains. This work, therefore, intends to first provide insights on the effects that the Covid-19 has had on three different sectors of industries – barely affected, affected, and severely affected industries. Subsequently it provides each sector of industries with a set of implementable resilience strategies to increase resilience and mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on their supply chains. To do so, first a supply chain typology model is developed based on three sets of attributes – functional, structural and disruption. Next, a Systematic Literature Review is conducted to identify the most effective supply chain resilience strategies for mitigating the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Results showed that agility and flexibility, collaboration and coordination, digital transformation, diversification, redundancy, sustainability, and visibility are the most effective strategies when dealing with Covid-19 disruptions. Finally, by taking into consideration each sector of industries separately, managers are given a set of useful recommendations on how to build resilience in supply chains.