Management and Industrial Engineering

Aravind Raj Sakthivel

Jayakrishna Kandasamy
J. Paulo Davim Editors

Managing
Supply Chain
Risk and
Disruptions: Post
COVID-19
Management and Industrial Engineering

Series Editor
J. Paulo Davim, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro,
Aveiro, Portugal
This series fosters information exchange and discussion on management and
industrial engineering and related aspects, namely global management, organiza-
tional development and change, strategic management, lean production, perfor-
mance management, production management, quality engineering, maintenance
management, productivity improvement, materials management, human resource
management, workforce behavior, innovation and change, technological and
organizational flexibility, self-directed work teams, knowledge management,
organizational learning, learning organizations, entrepreneurship, sustainable
management, etc. The series provides discussion and the exchange of information
on principles, strategies, models, techniques, methodologies and applications of
management and industrial engineering in the field of the different types of
organizational activities. It aims to communicate the latest developments and
thinking in what concerns the latest research activity relating to new organizational
challenges and changes world-wide. Contributions to this book series are welcome
on all subjects related with management and industrial engineering. To submit a
proposal or request further information, please contact Professor J. Paulo Davim,
Book Series Editor, [email protected]

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11690

Aravind Raj Sakthivel · Jayakrishna Kandasamy ·
J. Paulo Davim
Editors

Managing Supply Chain Risk

and Disruptions: Post
COVID-19
Editors
Aravind Raj Sakthivel Jayakrishna Kandasamy
Department of Manufacturing Engineering Department of Manufacturing Engineering
Vellore Institute of Technology Vellore Institute of Technology
Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India

J. Paulo Davim
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Aveiro
Aveiro, Portugal

ISSN 2365-0532 ISSN 2365-0540 (electronic)

Management and Industrial Engineering
ISBN 978-3-030-72574-7 ISBN 978-3-030-72575-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
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We dedicate this book to all front line
workers, researchers, and practitioners who
involved in action against COVID-19 for
their dedicated service and sacrifices they
made during this pandemic period
Thank You.
Foreword

I am glad to write a preface for the highly relevant book on the trending topic
Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions: Post COVID-19 edited by Aravind
Raj, Jayakrishna, and Paulo. The pandemic has taught us several lessons and the
book chapters attempted to compile the list of challenges in several sectors including
retail, agriculture, pharmaceutical, and humanitarian. As the title indicates the book
unfolds a contingency plan, long-term mitigation mechanisms with the support of
technologies are useful leads for further thoughts.
The Chap. 1 listed the challenges in the global supply chains using the SCOR
framework in the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguous scenarios.
Specific review considering black swan events including previous disruptions are
a good addition to a reader in understanding the importance of the topic as well as
engage with the author’s views on the use of practices with the support of data and
technology.
The next four chapters on preparedness and assessment of COVID-19 on different
sectors are good evidence for readers to sense the contextual perspectives through
primary sources discussed by the authors. It is interesting to see the role of disin-
termediation, local autonomy, and use of information technology as well as future
research directions mentioned by the authors. In a similar vein, the authors articu-
lated well food insecurity issues and overall loss that occurred due to pandemic with
the data from the Indian agriculture sector. Logistical issues due to whiplash effects
are argued well within the humanitarian supply chain along with the list of skillsets
needed to deal with future disasters.
The next four chapters outlay the dynamics of the supply chain and the author’s
perspective on the agile practices from the end to end supply chain, adaptability,
decision making, resilient supply network, and emergent action plans. The use of
basic multi-criteria decision-making techniques was wisely used by the authors to
support stakeholders engaged in the relief operations. On the network side, building
resilient networks is the trendy term used globally, and using the Indian case as an
example the authors spelled out the basic barriers in manufacturing, operations, and
distribution in the global supply and distribution network. Post COVID-19 action
plans in terms of capacity enhancement have also been proposed by the authors.

vii
viii Foreword

The final two chapters narrate the useful applications of technologies in the health-
care supply chain and generally argue the potential pathways to enhance robustness
in the Industry 4.0 scenario.
Overall I find the book will be a useful reference to both researchers and prac-
titioners to enhance their application and contextual knowledge in the topic of risk
and disruptions as well as encourage future researchers to contribute to the scholarly
debates on building resilient supply networks.

Nachiappan Subramanian
Professor of Operations and Logistics
Management and Supply Chains
University of Sussex Business School
Brighton, UK
Preface

Supply chain (SC) risks are complicated and can be classified into operational and
disruption risks. Pandemic outbursts are an unusual case of supply chain (SC) risks
causing huge disruption with its existence, propagation, and high level of uncertainty.
In recent days, the COVID-19 outbreak represents to be one of the major disruptions
encountered during the past decades which is “breaking many global supply chains”
severely (Araz et al. 2020). This book summarizes the effect of COVID-19 on the
global supply chain by comprehending the solutions to these questions.
• What were the challenges faced by supply chain providers during COVID-19?
• What supply chain strategies and practices have contributed to the COVID-19
crisis?
• What can supply chain professionals do to begin preparing for a future in which
this type of disruption may happen again?
This book also suggests the resilient strategies that can be adopted by supply chain
organizations, for quick recovery and reestablishing their networks. Further, this book
focuses on the challenges faced and how supply chain networks managed to be agile,
during the current global pandemic COVID-19. The role of digital technologies, such
as machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, and other IIoT tools
in building resilient supply chains will also be highlighted.
Impact in supply chain, challenges faced during this pandemic, issues in agri-
cultural sector, supply chain adoption strategies, decision support system to cater
emergency solution, supply chain post COVID-19, and new technologies for health
care supply chain were addressed in this book
This book will be a useful resource to researchers, students, and supply chain
professionals by offering solutions to restructure the global supply chains post
COVID-19.

Vellore, India Aravind Raj Sakthivel

Vellore, India Jayakrishna Kandasamy
Aveiro, Portugal J. Paulo Davim

ix
Acknowledgements

The editors would like to acknowledge the help of all the people involved in this
project and, more specifically, to the authors and reviewers that took part in the
review process. Without their support, this book would not have become a reality.
First, the editors would like to thank each one of the authors for their contributions.
Our sincere gratitude goes to the chapter’s authors who contributed their time and
expertise to this book.
Second, the editors wish to acknowledge the valuable contributions of the
reviewers regarding the improvement of quality, coherence, and content presentation
of chapters.

Aravind Raj Sakthivel

School of Mechanical Engineering
Vellore Institute of Technology
Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India
Jayakrishna Kandasamy
School of Mechanical Engineering
Vellore Institute of Technology
Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India
J. Paulo Davim
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Aveiro
Aveiro, Portugal

xi
Contents

1 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chain Management . . . . . . . 1

Manimuthu Arunmozhi, R. Kiran Kumar, and B. A. Srinivasa
2 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of FMCG Retail Supply
Chain During COVID-19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Ravi Shankar Bhakat and Md. Zahir Uddin Arif
3 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Agriculture Supply
Chain During COVID-19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Nitish Maan, Vijaya Kumar Manupati, Maciel M. Queiroz,
and Biswajita Mohanty
4 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Humanitarian Supply
Chain During COVID-19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
R. Vezhavendan
5 Supply Chain Adoption During COVID-19 Lockdown: Global
Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Lenin Nagarajan, Siva Kumar Mahalingam,
Jayakrishna Kandasamy, and Selvakumar Gurusamy
6 Design and Development of Decision Support System
for Emergency Need Relief Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
V. Kamala and K. Lakshmi
7 Analysis of Barriers for the Build the Resilient Supply Chain
Networks Post-COVID-19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Krishna Kumar Dadsena, K. Mathiyazhagan, and Atour Taghipour
8 Action Plans for Logistics and Supply Chain Recovery
Post-COVID-19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Deepak Mathivathanan and K. Sivakumar
9 Need for Embracing New Digital Technologies in Healthcare
Supply Chain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Manavalan Ethirajan and Jayakrishna Kandasamy
xiii
xiv Contents

10 Challenges Analysis of Leagile Supply Chains

in Manufacturing Context During COVID-19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Rohit Agrawal and S. Vinodh
11 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains and the Role
of Digitalisation: A VUCA Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Kotha Raj Kumar Reddy and P. Kalpana
Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Dr. Aravind Raj Sakthivel is an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical

Engineering at the Vellore Institute of Technology University, India. He received his
doctorate degree in Industrial Engineering from the National Institute of Technology,
Tiruchirappalli in 2014. His research area is focused on Agile manufacturing process
and their applications in manufacturing industries. Recent work focuses on Indus-
trial Systems Engineering, Additive Manufacturing, Industry 4.0 projects. He has
published 20 International journals papers in leading SCI/ SCOPUS Indexed jour-
nals and 34 papers in reputed conference proceedings; he is co-author for four book
chapters and edited two book. He is reviewer of reputed international journals. He
has received several awards including Doctoral Scholarship and Best Paper Award.

Dr. Jayakrishna Kandasamy is an Associate professor in the School of Mechan-

ical Engineering at the Vellore Institute of Technology University, India. Dr. Jayakr-
ishna’s research is focused on the design and management of manufacturing systems
and supply chains to enhance efficiency, productivity and sustainability performance.
More recent research is in the area of developing tools and techniques to enable value
creation through sustainable manufacturing, including methods to facilitate more
sustainable product design for closed-loop material flow in industrial symbiotic setup.
He has published 50 journal publications in leading SCI/SCOPUS Indexed journals,
22 book chapters, and 85 refereed conference proceedings, 2 books in CRC/Springer
Series. Dr. Jayakrishna’s team has received numerous awards in recognition for the
quality of the work that has been produced. He teaches undergraduate and grad-
uate courses in the manufacturing and industrial systems area and his initiatives
to improve teaching effectiveness have been recognized through national awards.
He has also been awarded Institution of Engineers (India)-Young Engineer Award
in 2019, awarded as Best Researcher for 2016–2019 consecutively by VIT Univer-
sity Vellore, and Distinguished Researcher Award in the field of Sustainable Systems

xv
xvi Editors and Contributors

Engineering in 2019 by International Institute of Organized Research. He is the Coor-

dinator of Circular Economy Club, VIT University, and serving as Academic Editor
in the journal of Mathematical Problems in Engineering, Hindawi Publications.

Dr. J. Paulo Davim is a Full Professor at the University of Aveiro,

Portugal. He is also distinguished as honorary professor in several universi-
ties/colleges/institutes in China, India and Spain. He received his Ph.D. degree
in Mechanical Engineering in 1997, M.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering
(materials and manufacturing processes) in 1991, Mechanical Engineering degree (5
years) in 1986 from the University of Porto (FEUP), the Aggregate title (Full Habil-
itation) from the University of Coimbra in 2005 and the D.Sc. (Higher Doctorate)
from London Metropolitan University in 2013. He is a Senior Chartered Engineer
in the Portuguese Institution of Engineers with an MBA and Specialist titles in
Engineering and Industrial Management as well as in Metrology. He is also Eur
Ing by FEANI, Brussels, and Fellow of IET (FIET), London. He has more than 30
years of teaching and research experience in Manufacturing, Materials, Mechanical
and Industrial Engineering, with special emphasis on Machining and Tribology. He
also has interest in Management, Engineering Education and Higher Education for
Sustainability. He has guided large numbers of postdoc, Ph.D. and master’s students
as well as coordinated and participated in several financed research projects. He
has received several scientific awards and honours. He has worked as evaluator of
projects for European Research Council (ERC) and other international research
agencies as well as examiner of Ph.D. thesis for many universities in different
countries. He is the Editor-in-Chief of several international journals, Guest Editor
of journals, books Editor, book Series Editor and Scientific Advisory for many
international journals and conferences. Presently, he is an Editorial Board member
of 30 international journals and acts as reviewer for more than 100 prestigious Web
of Science journals. In addition, he has also published as editor (and co-editor)
more than 200 books and as author (and co-author) more than 15 books, 100 book
chapters and 500 articles in journals and conferences (more than 280 articles in
journals indexed in Web of Science core collection/h-index 60+/11500+ citations,
SCOPUS/h-index 64+/14000+ citations, Google Scholar/h-index 82+/24000+
citations). He has been listed in World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University
study.

Contributors

Rohit Agrawal Department of Production Engineering, National Institute of Tech-

nology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India
Md. Zahir Uddin Arif Faculty of Business Studies, Department of Marketing,
Jagannath University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Manimuthu Arunmozhi Energy Research Institute, Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore, Singapore
Editors and Contributors xvii

Ravi Shankar Bhakat Management Development Institute Murshidabad (MDIM),

Murshidabad, India
Krishna Kumar Dadsena IBS, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Manavalan Ethirajan School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of
Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India
Selvakumar Gurusamy Mechanical Engineering, SSN College of Engineering,
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
P. Kalpana Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Information
Technology Design & Manufacturing (IIITDM), Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, India
V. Kamala College of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, Anna
University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Jayakrishna Kandasamy Mechanical Engineering, VIT University, Chennai,
Tamil Nadu, India;
School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil
Nadu, India
R. Kiran Kumar Volvo India Private Limited, Bangalore, India
K. Lakshmi College of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, Anna
University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Nitish Maan Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Tech-
nology Warangal, Warangal, India
Siva Kumar Mahalingam Mechanical Engineering, Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr.
Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Vijaya Kumar Manupati Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Insti-
tute of Technology Warangal, Warangal, India
Deepak Mathivathanan Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management,
Loyola Institute of Business Administration, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
K. Mathiyazhagan Operations & Quantitative Method, Thiagarajar School of
Management, Madurai, Tamilnadu, India
Biswajita Mohanty Vellore Institute of Technology Vellore, Vellore, Tamil Nadu,
India
Lenin Nagarajan Mechanical Engineering, Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala
R&D Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Maciel M. Queiroz Postgraduate Program in Business Administration, Paulista
University−UNIP, São Paulo, Brazil
Kotha Raj Kumar Reddy Supply Chain Analytics - SME, Chennai, Tamil Nadu,
India
xviii Editors and Contributors

K. Sivakumar Department of Mechanical Engineering, Siddharth Institute of

Engineering and Technology (SIETK), Puttur, Andhra Pradesh, India
B. A. Srinivasa MEI College, Bangalore, India
Atour Taghipour Faculty of International Business, Normandy University,
Normandy, France
R. Vezhavendan Department of Manufacturing Engineering, School of Mechanical
Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India
S. Vinodh Department of Production Engineering, National Institute of Tech-
nology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India
Abbreviations

3PL Third-Party Logistics

AHP Analytic Hierarchy Process
AI Artificial Intelligence
COVID-19 Corona Virus Disease 2019
DEMATEL Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory
DSS Decision Support System
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization
FMCG Fast Moving Consumer Goods
GSCM Global supply-chain management
HCSC Health Care Supply Chain
HSC Humanitarian supply chain
IFRC International Federation of Red Cross
INR Indian Rupee
IT Information Technology
MCDM Multiple-Criteria Decision-Making
MI Machine Learning
NGO Non-Governmental Organizations
PCAR Percentage Change in Arrival
PCP Percentage Change in Price
PROMEETHE Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment
Evaluation
QFD Quality Function Deployment
SARS-CoV-2 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2
SC Supply Chain
SWOT Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
TOPSIS Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution
VIKOR VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje
VUCA Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity

xix
Chapter 1
Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply
Chain Management

Manimuthu Arunmozhi, R. Kiran Kumar, and B. A. Srinivasa

Abstract The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is an exceptional shock to the

global supply chain management. With the continuation of nation-wide lockdown,
worldwide economic downfall, and interruption of demand and supply chains, the
economy is likely to face an extended period of downturn. Since this outbreak caused
long-term impact in the global supply chain, we have to enquire and solve the short-
term impact to overcome the crisis in the current scenario. Moreover, the world is
becoming more VUCA in nature, and pandemic is one of the white swan events
which created huge impact in our daily life. This chapter discusses the risk factors,
disruptions, and changes in the strategies in global supply practices. Further, compa-
nies should be prepared for the sudden hazard, disaster, health crisis, and emergency
conditions for the steady running of the supply chain. The organizations must be
proactive and face the challenge by planning and introducing new methods and tech-
nologies. Also, in a positive note, the outbreak of COVID-19 will help us to adopt
and invent new strategies to be faced in future without breaking the supply chain face
the black swan events soon.

Keywords COVID-19 · Pandemic · Global supply chain · VUCA · Black swan

1.1 Introduction

As the world is becoming more connected it gives opportunities to develop the

business to new horizon in the VUCA world. The demand for products, goods, and
services increases steadily. However, all of these were brought to a grinding halt

M. Arunmozhi (B)
Energy Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
e-mail: [email protected]
R. Kiran Kumar
Volvo India Private Limited, Bangalore, India
B. A. Srinivasa
MEI College, Bangalore, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_1
2 M. Arunmozhi et al.

by the COVID-19 outbreak. Due to COVID-19 outbreak nation-wide there were

lockdowns, airspace and borders were closed, witnessing an uncommon disturbance
to the global economy, irrespective of size and level of supply chain operations
globally (Araz et al. 2020). Further, COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe,
causing disruption and uncertainty to business operations. Despite the exceptional
steps and increasing efforts made by governments, the consequence of COVID-19
outbreak is being noticed strongly with every single day and stalking the businesses
growth (Alghababsheh and Gallear 2020). According to Ivanov and Dolgui (2020),
75% of companies have experienced supply chain disruptions because of COVID-
19 limiting the logistics activities significantly. Further, the volatility in the supply
chain practices; uncertainty in the decision-making; complexity in co-ordination;
and ambiguity in information sharing makes global supply chain a perfect candidate
for VUCA (Bennett and Lemoine 2014).
Generally, suppliers are located across the globe. In this hard situation, the busi-
ness companies facing the epidemic outbreaks have a certain interrogation, like how
long the supply chain will undergo this disruption and a supply chain to recover
after an epidemic outbreak (Ivanov and Dolgui 2020). For example, accepting the
timely shortages, using pandemic plan of actions, and modifying the operations
will help to overcome supply chain disruption. However, no one anticipated the
severity of COVID-19 outbreak which led to high disruption and uncertainty in the
global supply chain practices. Therefore, in this chapter, the study discusses about
the risk factors, impacts, strategies, and challenges in future regarding the impact of
COVID-19 in global supply chain (Ali et al. 2020). Global supply chain manage-
ment (GSCM) is the scattering of stocks and services, by maximizing the profit and
minimizing the waste in all transnational companies (Koberg and Longoni 2019). The
difference between GSCM and SCM is that GSCM concentrates on transnational
business corporation, while other concentrates on national companies. The GSCM
focuses on the four distinct areas: operations management, supply management,
logistics, and marketing. These are classified according to the area of concentration
(Manuj et al. 2014). Further, global supply chains are systems that can extend across
many continents and countries for sourcing and providing stocks and services. The
nature of a GSCM is generally accessing low expense country and mentioning the
achievement of product and services from countries with abundant human resources
and economic production costs (Choi et al. 2020). Also, GSCM involves company,
purchaser, supplier tiers, and the suppliers from different countries across the global.
Due to COVID-19, the global supply chain faces many risks and disruptions in
the field of market, logistics, and supply (Tang 2006). The raw materials from the
suppliers play a major role in the supply chain. Around the world, most of the raw
materials suppliers are from China; it is largely affected by the pandemic and the
industries are shut for a very long period (Deloitte 2020). Therefore, the impact of
COVID-19 on global supply chain was substantially significant and many countries
are vulnerable to the indirect effects of the COVID-19 outbreak (Guan et al. 2020).
1 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chain Management 3

1.2 Global Supply Chains Composition

In businesses, we must ensure two important things in supply chain: one, the supply
chain should be achievable, and the other is results should be delivered on time. The
supply chain risks differ with the nature of the business, size of the business, and
the products involved (Srinivas and Sreedharan 2018). The process flow of supply
chain management starts with the product or service and ends at the delivery of
the product and it is the utilization by the end customer. In our everyday lives, we
use and consume million things. While delivering these products, the supply chain
management creates a tuneful and efficient environment (Liu et al. 2016). If any
break in this chain happens, it causes disruption in the system. The supply chain
management is made of few components which are important and critical to the
system. The explanations of the above-mentioned components are discussed in brief.

1.2.1 Planning

Planning is the basic step in every process. It is important to finalize the strategies
and set up in their places before the beginning of the entire supply chain. Check the
need for the product, and monitor the cost, feasibility, manpower, and profit, etc.,
which are important. Without proper planning, it is impossible to achieve long-term
and effective benefits. We must spend enough time for this phase. Once the plans
are finalized, consider the advantages and disadvantages to proceed further. Every
business needs a process flowchart or plan to design the model (Peidro et al. 2009).
Planning helps to find out the need and supply trends in the global market, and this
in turn helps to lead an efficient GSCM (Sumner et al. 2020).

1.2.2 Information

The social networking is dominating the today’s world by series flow of information.
Updating the current trends is one of the essential that a business stays side by
side with the latest information in all aspects of its production (Flint 2004). The
information should be properly understood and timely disseminated by knowing
the current market supply trends and the need for the product (Musa et al. 2014).
Information plays a crucial role in knowledge-based economy and if we ignore any
aspects of information in business it will bring down the prospects of the business
(Rejikumar et al. 2019).
4 M. Arunmozhi et al.

1.2.3 Source

Raw materials from the suppliers play a very important role in GSCM systems. The
products which are sold to the end user are made with the help of different set of
raw materials. The raw materials should be cost-effective with required quality. So,
the supplier needs to deliver the raw materials on time within the proposed budget.
If the supplier is unable to deliver, the businesses suffer and obtain negative honor
(Anderson et al. 2007). The good quality resource from the supplier gives good
quality products so that the supplier can maintain good reputation in the market.
Thus, the supplier plays a strong role in supply chain management system.

1.2.4 Inventory

Inventory management is one of the essential parts in supply chain. It includes all
the resources and raw materials needed for the production (Sreedharan et al. 2018).
Inventory should be regularly monitored to update the stock. If the inventory is not
properly maintained, it will affect the function of the supply chain and goods cannot
be delivered on time (Peidro et al. 2009; Liu et al. 2016).

1.2.5 Production

Production is one of the essential aspects in GSCM. It is possible only when all plans
are executed, and other components cope up with other. Production is followed with
series of final preparation like test and packing before delivering the final products
(Raghuram et al. 2020).

1.2.6 Location

All business needs a location which is profitable and flourish the business as well.
A business cannot survive if the location do not have demand for the raw materials.
Hence location should be connected to the essential resources for business’ produc-
tion prosperity. Availability of manpower is also considered while starting up a new
business venture (Liu et al. 2016).
1 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chain Management 5

1.2.7 Transportation

Transportation is the prominent term in supply chain from manufacturing to

distributing the semi-finished/finished product to the market. Further, on time delivery
of goods is mandatory to sustain smooth business process (Mentzer et al. 2004). Also,
it should ensure zero damage and no loss in transit. The company must work toward
secured transit process while delivering the goods. The businesses which pay great
attention to transportation management will benefit from the production and customer
(Jia and Hu 2011).

1.2.8 Return of Goods

Facilities for the return of faulty goods with response to the consumer grievance
also create a strong supply chain along with the other components. Machine may
also become faulty once in a lifetime because no one is infallible. Customers expect
return of goods under certain circumstances. Even the best quality machines have
unavoidable control lapses. By following customer complaints, as strong business
process they have to recall the product and issue an apology. This maintains goodwill
and create good customer bonding. If any break and weak lines are identified, it should
be dealt with immediately. Management as well as teams at various levels must put
great emphasis on all the components (Hasani et al. 2012). For effective planning
of execution, the business needs to be studied carefully with respect to demand and
supply. Supply chain management system is very critical system to ensure consumer
requirements and timely manufacture of goods.

1.3 VUCA World and Black Swan Events

The supply chain that acts in timely and flexible way will have the agility and
resilience to withstand the turbulent times of today’s VUCA world (Packowski 2014),
where VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
Volatility: Change in dynamics and its nature; change in speed of forces and catalysts
and its nature.
Uncertainty: The absence of anticipation, the hope for surprise, and the sense of
attention and grasping of issues and events.
Complexity: A greater number of forces, problem my tying, no domino effect, and
uncertainty flowing in the organizations.
Ambiguity: Reality out of focus, likely misinterpretations, and the domino effect
confusion.
6 M. Arunmozhi et al.

The VUCA term is gaining more fame as the rapid changes in global trade and
commerce from ground zero to supply chain plans in every day. Volatility is both
the speed of change and the frequency of change. Changes can be instigated by your
own company, your competitors, or by a natural phenomenon, such as a pandemic or
earthquake. Uncertainty is lack of predictability, which makes it impossible to define
requirements (Bennett and Lemoine 2014). When you cannot define what you need
to succeed, it is then impossible to optimize operations. Difficulty is the multitude
of forces and confusing issues and the blurring of roles. Ambiguity is haziness—the
inability to get a good read on a situation because it is in flux. There are two types of
disruption upsetting the world; they are innovation and crisis. Innovation disruption
is the normal cycle of new product and service development, while crisis disruption
is the kind of “black swan” event that we are facing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nobody saw it coming and it has “massive transformational impact”. The pandemic
is forming companies into four types, based on how they were doing in December
2019 to now; they are:
Success to success: These are companies that were doing well in December and now
are doing even better. Retail stores is one example—business is booming, and its
stock is up now over the end of 2019.
Success to failure: These companies were looking forward to a good 2020 but have
had the rug pulled out from under them. Airline carriers and hospitality industry
players are in this group.
Failure to success: Flat in December, companies in this group have experienced an
unexpected surge in business due to the pandemic. Many sanitation companies were
now able to meet the demand for its disinfection products, wipes. Some experts say
the demand became five times the normal volume.
Failure to quit: Struggling already in December, these companies are now calling it
quits. The key is to be able to regenerate and be flexible. Optionality is achieved
by creating numerous scenarios and being able to act crucial between them as
circumstances read out.
VUCA creates uncertainty, which means predicting the future is impossible. In
a normal supply chain network, design enterprise managers would look at four- to
five-year requirements, capital expenditures, and so on, and adjust the operation to
meet the expected demands. In other words, designing to demand plans. However,
if you do not know the demands, you cannot adjust the equation (El-Sakty and
Osama 2015). Then we need real-time visibility into what is going on throughout the
network, so you can instantly pivot to whichever of the scenarios is taking place. It
is a fundamental shift in the way supply.
1 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chain Management 7

1.3.1 Black Swan Events

A “black swan” is an event which cannot be foreseen, but when it occurs it changes
the whole understanding of the market and has major effect (Taleb 2020). Further,
the COVID-19 was perceived as a white swan event due to the certainty of the issues
of the virus outbreak. However, when it became a global pandemic it turned out to
be black swan event as the nations were not aware of the impact of the COVID-19
on the supply chain and how industries can operate in the era of the COVID-19
outbreak (Siegenfeld et al. 2020). An ancient saying that assumes black swan did
not prevail—a saying that became re-explained to teach a different lesson after the
first European experience. The events with a very low probability of occurring and
consequently are difficult to predict, however, have a potentially disastrous impact.
These events are often referred to as black swans (Taleb 2007). A black swan is an
event that has an almost zero likelihood of occurring, but, if it does, can have a major
impact (Liu and Wang 2011). Black swan events are difficult to define because they
may have never occurred. COVID-19 can be considered as the black swan event
that compels many industries and companies to re-assess and change their GSCM.
COVID-19 surprises the world as normal black swan events (Kilpatrick and Barter
2020).

1.4 Global Supply Chain: Disruption

The COVID-19 outbreak is indeed disrupting global supply chains and many compa-
nies have a Tier 1 or Tier 2 vendor that has been impacted directly or indirectly
by the virus (Deloitte 2020). Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is felt across the
supply chain, leading to labor shortages and travel restrictions which are unavoid-
able (Queiroz et al. 2020). Moreover, a black swan event occurs in an organiza-
tion, and its impact is felt all over the supply chain (Scheibe and Blackhurst 2017).
Moreover, having the right information about the business operations can predict
the unexpected events. Furthermore, in global crisis, the supply chain visibility is
crucial and becomes more critical for flawless business operations (Sreedharan et al.
2020). The global supply chain disruption highlighted tremendously the ripple effect
and resilience importance in global operations. The paper “Exploring Supply Chain
Network Resilience in the Presence of the Ripple Effect” by Li and Zobel (2020)
highlights how the ripple effects can create disorder across the supply chain network.
Moreover, to understand the supply challenges in various industry in the VUCA
world, the work reviewed the various scholarly articles and tabulated the findings in
Table 1.1.
Based on the review of Table 1.1, GSCM consists of different practices, which
are discussed in the following sections.
8 M. Arunmozhi et al.

Table 1.1 Review of supply chain activities in the different industries

S. No. Authors Approach Supply chain Application
Practices
1 Badakhshan et al. Network Supply chain Financial
(2020) optimization collaboration management
2 Brevik et al. (2020) Simulation Supply chain Broiler production
network
3 Flores and Agro supply chain Supply chain Food production
Villalobos (2020) design
4 Ren et al. (2020) Circular economy Supply chain Plastic cycling
network
5 Azzamouri et al. Network Supply chain Fertilizer
(2019) optimization Co-ordination production
6 Bottani et al. (2019) Multiple-sourcing Supply chain Food supply
policy design
7 Kellner and Utz Posteriori approach Supply chain Portfolio
(2019) collaboration management
8 Lechner and Circular economy Supply chain Product recycling
Reimann (2019) design
9 Priore et al. (2019) Material procurement Supply chain Inventory
collaboration management
10 Schätter et al. Resource allocation Supply chain Robust system
(2019) modelling
11 Sharahi et al. Fuzzy optimization Supply chain Natural gas supply
design chain
13 Zhao et al. (2019) Optimization Supply chain Resilience
techniques transaction
14 Sreedharan et al Pharma supply chain Supply chain Pharmaceutical
(2019) design company

1.4.1 Cargo Carrier Assessments

Wide ranging of evaluation is necessary for delivering cargo on time at affordable

cost. It should thoroughly analyze before getting into the transportation partner.
We should create a framework as valuable tools while performing cargo carrier
examination (Araz et al. 2020).

1.4.2 Geopolitical Instability

Supply chain disruptions are generally caused by trade wars, protests, etc. If a partic-
ular city or country encountered unrest, it will produce various issues in supply
chain. Civil unrest leads to loss of communications, and time delays in supply chain
1 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chain Management 9

problems. The size and time duration of these events are unpredictable (Helbig et al.
2016).

1.4.3 Cultural Research

Supply chain decisions are made with background information where political insta-
bility is common. Research has to be conducted on climate of the geographic area
where we get the resource from. When a chance of instability is found then that
region should be heavily considered. If there is no option, we have to develop a
strong contingency to avoid worst-case scenario (Alghababsheh and Gallear 2020).

1.4.4 Price Hikes

Cost of raw materials influences the component value in the supply chain. Also,
market price is generally unpredictable which creates threat to the supply chain
(Tang 2006).

1.4.5 Market Exploitation

Global market does not affect an individual person but impacts everyone. The best
way to reduce threat related to rising prices is to understand the market’s trend.
Having knowledge of market trends allows us to decide when we have to lower
inventory raw materials and purchase more of that material. Research and analysis
suggest as a report regarding the market trends and we have to act accordingly for
the future works (Liu et al. 2016).

1.4.6 Cyber-Attacks

Cyber-attacks and computer hacking impacts supply chain events over the last five
years. Immeasurable amount of data flows through a supply chain every day. There-
fore, industries must be concerned over this area to avoid supply rain risk. New tech-
nologies are invented to safeguard against cyber threats. To protect against natural
disaster risk, we have to backup suppliers from various geographical region (Mensah
and Merkuryev 2014). Also, we have to make sure about the contingency plans for
distribution centers and transportation routes in case of natural disaster. Distribution
network should be set up in a place where items can move from various global regions.
Making a more dynamic in adapting new technologies without lagging in security
10 M. Arunmozhi et al.

and safety is the most required paradigm in the actual market scenario (Wolden et al.
2015; Rejikumar et al. 2019). Global extravagance lies in delivering qualitative prod-
ucts at right time ensuring the safety and security from any kind of miscellaneous
cyber-attacks as the current situation affected the supply chain system in terms of
delivery, marketing, valuations, security, distribution, and customer engagement.

1.4.7 Transportation Failure

Supply chain disruptions in transportation are regulation changes, shipping damage,

cargo theft, and transit delay. Now, new logistics system and transportation services
are creating more competitiveness to today’s challenge (Liu et al. 2016). COVID-
19 situation forced to put travel restrictions and in some worst cases travel ban has
happened for all types of goods and commodities from highly pandemic-affected
countries, leveraging the supply chain in air (Ivanov and Dolgui 2020). With these
restrictions, few of the consignments missed their delivery timeline and forced many
trading companies to withdraw many international product transportations leading
to major setback in supply chain market.

1.5 Impact of COVID-19 on the Supply Chain Practices

To face the black swan events the supply chain has to be both positive in agility
angle and able to absorb the sudden spike; and avoid disruption and able to recover
in a short span of time (Ivanov 2020). The business which had shown few signs of
reviving has again been delayed and the financial stress in the industry continues.
Things like material shortages and increased rates on account of the shortage are
impacting the decision-making of foundries. Since component inventories for assem-
blies that are sourced from China are affected, the schedules which were to resume
may not happen and projects which were waiting for commissioning with support
from China are on a standstill due to travel restrictions, and funds crunch has initi-
ated (Kilpatrick and Barter 2020). The short-term impact of supply chain mainly
lies in the lack of personal flexibility, difficulty in recovering production, and trans-
port restrictions. Also, the degree of disruptions increases as the time to recovery
increases in the supply chain network. Because the majority of the manufacturing hub
are centered in China, the pandemic can cripple the supply of the necessary compo-
nents to other nations (Kilpatrick and Barter 2020). Customer-responsive strategy
is commonly used among businesses in global supply chain. Focusing mainly on
customer, that is considering customer perceptive, helps to understand the difficulty
in customer values, and solutions to these challenges are implemented and businesses
have increased fame on cost-reduction efforts (Raghuram et al. 2020).
1 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chain Management 11

• To move forward, updating the latest trends, monitoring the data insight, and
grasping the new customer behavior will be the key to successful marketing in
supply chain.
• Advertisers can reach the customer in digital platforms like TV and online as
users are staying at home. They can invest more in advertising through television
and social networking due to decrease in in-store traffic.

Logistics firms are directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic which is involved in
storage, movement, and flow of goods. It helps to deliver the products to customers
across borders. Supply chain disruption occurs when these are affected by this current
pandemic. Logistics generally facilitate trade and commerce to help business (Albors-
Garrigos 2020).

1.5.1 Exit Strategy for the GSCM

Exit strategy will be considered when developing a commodity strategy as a front-end

activity. Further, it should be included in the acquisition documents and contractual
terms and conditions where possible. We need a strategy which is consistent with
overall sourcing strategy. Also, exit strategy will include the needs in the contract and
it is placed at the start of a supplier relationship. Exit strategies should be reviewed
annually and there are several considerations to be made when developing an exit
plan, including:
1. Pursue assistance requirements
2. Data safety
3. Knowledge and documentation transfer
4. Expense
5. Manpower.

According to their own merits, contract relationship should be considered. The

COVID-19 outbreak may have deepened the pushback against globalization among
the different countries that were building a new supply chain partnership with
multi countries. Further, the COVID outbreak questions the stability of the global
supply practices and promotes many countries to move toward import substitution
(“reshoring”) (Polatidis et al. 2018). In this pandemic time, considering the exit
strategy in global supply chain is very important in terms of supplier relationship.

1.5.2 Rethinking the Global Value Chain

In global value chain, the COVID-19 outbreak act as a wake-up call for companies
and improve their actions and ready for flexibility in future unpredictable events.
12 M. Arunmozhi et al.

Chinese manufacturers play major role in the supply chain of other companies. The
impact of COVID-19 in Chinese manufacturers is felt around the world because it
plays a central role in supply chain. Industries like electronics, automobiles, phar-
maceuticals, and other consumer products like surgical gowns and masks had an
acute disruption. Supply chain designs are interdependent with every sector and the
management should think and act to get through this complex structure (Dolgui
and Ivanov 2020). In recent years, supply chains have become progressively global.
There is an increase in the number of tradable products and services. The products
produced remotely from the market, which are consumed, are determined as trad-
ability. Transportation cost and perish ability are the two main factors in tradability.
Many companies shifted to global sourcing by taking advantage of cost reduction
in labor, materials, and lands in low-cost region. Goods with high value, depending
on the size and shipment cost, were produced in low-cost region. Subcontracting is
an important factor in the growth of the supply chain. It is adopted for numerous
reasons, which include specialists required in manufacturing process; increase in
knowledge of components; and flexible capacity depending on the demand. Subcon-
tracting results in rooted tiring of supply chains that form a multistage production
network. Suppliers form their own network of suppliers having many tiers. It is
extremely difficult for companies to have clear visibility over the suppliers. This
is where the major disruption occurs. Earlier we had many black swan events, but
the disruption caused by COVID-19 is different from the other. Country risk rate
are unpredictable in this event. No one could imagine that the world’s second largest
economy shut down external logistics and went offline. Because of supply chain tiring
there are delays in shipping, and organizations are highly dependent and vulnerable
to this uncertainty.

1.5.3 Re-Assessing Supply Chain Risk

Supply chain risks associated with segmentation and globalization are ignored over
the past few years. But the current situation shows the risks and their impacts. Joining
global multilevel supply networks and lean production leads to crises. Managers
should understand their supply chain’s vulnerabilities based on the above fact and
possible actions have to be taken. They are:

1.5.3.1 Consider Regionalization

The U.S.–China trade war has already made regionalization of manufacturing back
on track. The production houses are considering localizing the supplier to avoid
disruption. Toyota from Japan and other Chinese manufacturers pioneered in lean
production, and collocated the suppliers nearby. To apply lean and on-time production
methods for efficient logistics and transport, many companies are following this.
1 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chain Management 13

1.5.3.2 Develop Second Sources or Additional Safety Stocks

Developing second source or saving additional safety stocks will increase the cost.
We need to think as a long-term benefit for supply chain resilience. There are diffi-
culties in concentrating the manufacturer or supplier and resources location. It is
important to calculate how much safety stock is needed depending on the circum-
stances. In complex manufacturing process, we have to develop proper alternative
which needs certification. We face serious challenges when the suppliers are deliv-
ering sources with unique capabilities. For example, Semiconductor Manufacturing
Company in Asia has the largest global market for most of the advanced chips, and
majority of the smartphone manufacturers rely on this company for advanced chips
(Carson and Hung 2014). Asian countries are the major contributor for the world’s
semiconductor integrated circuit. In turn, some Asian countries are dependent on
Dutch supplier for lithography systems and the corresponding supplier is dependent
on a factory in Europe for its optical engine. Because of the critical dependency,
some Asian government started their own initiative such as making in their own
countries. Developing an alternate source of supply will reduce risk in supply chain.
Long-term purchasing commitment will make new supplier to match the price with
the existing customer. In developing the safety stock and resources, buying from
higher cost producer will not satisfy the manufacturers.

1.5.3.3 Re-Think Scale and Product Mix

Many companies focused on factories that manufacture variants in single platform.

Handling a wider mix of products within same factories will give regionalized
production when disruption occurs. This approach is more popular in industries
like consumer goods and electrical appliances. Further, IMF forecasts that U.S. GDP
for 2020 can be 8% lower than previous year and recovery in 2021 is yet to be fully
explored (Kranke 2020).

1.5.3.4 Challenges Facing Supply Chain Practices

Every organizations need to follow safety measures, such as wearing masks, social
distancing, and a strong response to avoid surges which threaten supply chain. The
infection results in localized knockdowns and business interruptions. Supply chain
organizations understood that Tier 1 suppliers are not enough. Much of this was due
to faulty assumptions regarding Tier 1 suppliers and possibly a degree of wishful
thinking. Also, the supply was affected by shutdown of Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers
in the virus spreads region and in other parts of the world. Therefore, it is pivotal
for organizations to evaluate their supply chain activities in detail, to detect the
faults (Handfield and Nichols 2004). Such practices will facilitate effective action
by the organization when the downstream supply chain is threatened. Also, compa-
nies should stop focusing not only on supply chain visibility but also in resource
14 M. Arunmozhi et al.

investment and study supply chain difficulties. It is a tedious process particularly in

large organizations. The outbreak like COVID-19 taught us that if companies did not
pay more attention in supply chain crisis, it will cause weaknesses in supply chain.
Precautions method is not only related to COVID-19, but organizations need ample
data to predict the impact of other unpredicted events such as:
• Commercial wars
• Calamities
• Civil disorder
• Protests.

1.6 Summary of the Findings

As the COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted the supply chain practices, it is instrumental
to develop effective approach to deal with the COVID-19 crisis for supply chain
resilience in the VUCA world. Table 1 has highlighted various functions in the
supply chain and approaches used to manage the supply chain practices.
• The COVID-19 outbreak not only affects the supply chain but also affects soci-
eties and economies at their core. Businesses are eager to boost productivity and
demand in the global supply chain.
• The characters of VUCA are the challenges that we face due to COVID-
19 outbreak, but the successful leadership will change the model to vision,
understanding, clarity and adaptability.
• The black swan event is compared with the current pandemic. The pandemic is
unexpected and hard to predict because it is beyond the normal expectations.
• The pandemic control is a collective effort and support to lower capacity countries.
• The supply chain risk determines business nature, difficulty of the chain, and
number of products included.
• The three components of global supply chain are: marketing, logistics, and supply.
• When a particular firm is disrupted, its effects are often felt throughout the supply
chain network because they are interlinked.
• In economic growth, consumer sector contributes the most. In this pandemic,
consumer sector was under pressure and the impact is likely to be short term.
• The effects of COVID-19 pandemic are difficult to access and model, but
businesses begin to reduce the supply chain distributions.
• Insights about the pre and post COVID-19 impacts on supply chain market and
the major setbacks for trading and marketing industries to meet up their customer
engagements and balancing their workforce and deliverables are researched.
• Activating raw materials substitutions and developing alternative supply chain
scenarios result in change in pricing strategies.
• Frequent financial modeling and scenario planning is required to protect growth
and increase profitability without any resilience.
1 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chain Management 15

• Take long-term considerations in business models as a result of pandemic.

• Furthermore, GSCM consists of different supply chain practices, such as supply
chain network; supply chain co-ordination; supply chain design; supply chain
collaboration; supply chain design; supply chain modeling; and supply chain
transaction, that require continuous monitoring for robust operations without
deviation.

Further, many firms are mostly dependent on China because of availability of domain
experts and abundant resources for production. Therefore, developing a contingency
plan to avoid supply chain disruption and also to design future supply chain model,
decision makers should include new measures, including responsiveness, resilience,
and re-configuring apart from quality, delivery, and cost.

1.7 Conclusion

As the world is affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, the major challenges for orga-
nization and industries is to co-ordinate the supply chains practices globally. At this
juncture, the supply chain visibility is instrumental as it offers more clarity to take
effective decision making in the crisis. Furthermore, the supply chain visibility is
instrumental in developing a feasible exit strategy for the organization and minimize
the uncertainty in the business operations. Moreover, the data collection is critical
for supply chain practices to make a map for the supply chain transactions to reduce
the ambiguity and make the practices more resilient for future disruptions. Further-
more, the COVID-19 impact on the GSCM is a black swan event, making it difficult
to predict and difficult to contain as it is highly uncertain. Such black swan events
drive the company to adopt exit strategy which are instrumental for the supply chain
recovery and it is vital for the organization. Also, one has to ensure that the global
value chain has to be assessed without any issues and to re-assess the supply chain
risk for the global operations. Adding to this, various challenges arise in the supply
chain practices which need to minimize global supply chain operations, and it is
clearly explained in the following chapters.

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Chapter 2
Challenges Faced and Preparedness
of FMCG Retail Supply Chain During
COVID-19

Ravi Shankar Bhakat and Md. Zahir Uddin Arif

Abstract Coronavirus pandemic or COVID-19 outbreak has created huge disrup-

tions in the supply chains of goods and commodities. Continuous reconfiguration of
supply chain is the new theme in the post-COVID world for all the FMCG retailers.
A series of lockdown have caused much more serious implications for the businesses
and firms. Today, FMCG producers and retailers need more flexibility than ever in
their global and local supply chain process to be successful. A resilient supply chain
for FMCG goods is the need of the hour which requires understanding of any contin-
gencies. In addition, after the crisis traditional modern retailers inside shopping malls
are affected, and there is a pressing need to re-emphasize on digital platforms and
partners. Due to behavioral changes, proper planning and assessment of consumer
demand, logistics infrastructure, warehousing capabilities etc. are quintessential for
managing the stockpile of critical FMCG items.

Keywords FMCG distribution · Digital supply chains · Retailers · Critical goods

2.1 Introduction

Coronavirus pandemic or COVID-19 outbreak has created huge disruptions in the

supply chains of goods and commodities. Deloitte website report states that COVID-
19 shocked the world and twisted the normal life across the globe. The disrup-
tive phenomenon started with coronavirus outburst in Wuhan, capital city of Hubei
province in central part of China. Post December 31, 2019 with the first case of the
potential epidemic, it turned into a global pandemic by the end of February 2020
with almost 100,000 people affected and 3,000 mortality cases (Ivanov 2020).

R. S. Bhakat (B)
Management Development Institute Murshidabad (MDIM), Murshidabad West Bengal,, India
Md. Z. U. Arif
Faculty of Business Studies, Department of Marketing, Jagannath University, Dhaka 1100,
Bangladesh

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 19

A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_2
20 R. S. Bhakat and Md. Z. U. Arif

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has created a crisis across the globe. Busi-
nesses realized in a hard way that supply chains activities are the core processes
of global economy. Societies and communities across the world faced unforeseen
problems due to lack of essentials supply during the COVID outbreak. A series of
lockdown have caused much more serious implications for the businesses and firms.
Without a doubt, COVID-19 has re-emphasized the need of supply chain for our
economy and society. To control the effects of such a crisis on the individual supply
chain, an effective management must quickly implement appropriate measures (Yu
et al. 2020).
Compared to all businesses, retail has been the most affected business by the
pandemic. Unlike other sectors, retail supply chains are daily affairs coordinating
various routes and schedules. Till now, this has been made possible with the option of
providing opportunities for replenishment for large and small retail stores. Further
adaptation in a strenuous environment and new market conditions would test the
survival of retail chains. Global supply chains have been disrupted due to loss of
labor and raw material inputs, creating ripple effects that cross national boundaries
(Yu and Aviso 2020).
However, even before the pandemic, supply chain in retail has always been unique.
Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) is the article of daily use having a high
consumption frequency. FMCG supply chain managerial decisions focus on finding
out when to order and how much to order. Keeping up the optimum flow of goods is
usually a priority of FMCG supply chain. The complexity, expected efficiency and
cost is peculiar for retail supply chain and logistics (Huber et al. 2017).
Numerous SKUs require multiple mode of transportation and warehousing of
goods; at the same time ensuring adequate stock. All these are efficiently tackled with
a high level of software support systems across the various coordinated activities.
Moreover, the nature of the retail network is also influenced greatly by the number,
size and objective of the retail partners along with the mode of transports (Mihajlović
and Trajković 2020).

2.2 Behavioral Change and Post Crisis Supply Chains

When it comes to retail supply chain, the implications are more severe. This demands
an additional push for the supply chain management after the pandemic situation. At
the same time, special provisions should be made to keep up the logistics and allied
activities for future crisis (Hobbs 2020).
When the essential goods consumption is growing continuously due to behavioral
change in the market, FMCG products need to be given that extra focus in terms of
production, procurement and processing of orders. FMCG retailers need to assess
in real time pertinent to the availability of critical low- or high-value goods and
products. There would be high impact on the revenue streams of retail businesses if
various bottlenecks related to order quantity, backend capacity and price volatility
are not efficiently managed.
2 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of FMCG Retail Supply … 21

FMCG goods as the major chunk of essential goods needed extra emphasis and
consideration. The movement of FMCG goods has undergone a series of transfor-
mation due to the challenges posed by changing consumers’ needs. The situation of
COVID-19 is turning out to be a natural disruptive phenomenon that is forcing many
FMCG firms, viz., Unilever, P&G, ITC and similar companies, and even the whole
industry to redesign and realign their supply chain structure and processes.
When we look at the overall potential, the global FMCG market is expected
to reach 15 trillion dollar in next five years, growing consistently despite major
challenges. E-commerce growth coupled with traditional brick and mortar outlets is
catalyzing the growth of this sector. Even during the lockdown period, offline outlets
of major retailers have started acting as the backend support system of the online
commerce activities. Major shopping mall was temporarily transformed into supply
chain networks and hubs.

2.3 Challenges for Retailers and Partners

COVID-19 has created a separate impact on suppliers and buyers in terms of behav-
ioral change. Stakeholders of the supply chain must take all those compulsory
habitual shifts into account. Prima facie, we can say that customers have started
giving unforeseen priority to health and safety over price and easy accessibility.
Retailers of FMCG products must necessarily readjust strategic and operational activ-
ities to ensure the health and safety. One evident way is to minimize the contacts
and reduction of various human touch points. Going by the majority of health and
safety conscious suppliers and buyers, it must be ensured that retailers and FMCG
firms take special steps to enhance the sanitation and hygiene of supply chains. In
the pursuit of velocity and efficiency in FMCG retail, the probability of fluctuation
grows (Scheibe and Blackhurst 2017).

2.3.1 Panic Buying

COVID created a sense of panic among the consumers due to unprecedented change
in the society status quo. The end-consumers felt the impact of emergency stock
up of essentials during self-isolation. Therefore, observing the essential goods and
commodities can provide first-hand knowledge of dealing with respect to the shelf
life. For fastest moving goods with rather short shelf life, retailers have to tackle up the
challenges of out-of-stock crisis due to unprecedented panic buying from consumers.
Supply chain partners, therefore, should rework on the traditional processes in terms
of planning, forecasting, replenishment of essential and low shelf life products.
Proper planning and assessment of consumer demand, logistics infrastructure, ware-
housing capabilities etc. are quintessential for managing the stockpile of critical
FMCG items.
22 R. S. Bhakat and Md. Z. U. Arif

Retailers and partners should take certain steps to reduce the impact of panic
buying and subsequent stockpiling activities by consumers. All the chances of future
crisis need careful consideration. The understanding of the motivations behind such
behaviors can also mitigate the negative effect of such behavior at retail store level.
However, putting a limit to purchases of critical items may deal with panic buying
temporarily. But, there is a need to explore the fundamental impact on the retail setups
in case of chronic pandemic crisis and habitual panic buying (Hobbs 2020).

2.3.2 Procurement

Procurement and sourcing of commodities, goods and branded products poses a

serious challenge to retailers. Due to lockdown, there is a need to match the avail-
ability and capacity with respect to critical products. There must be revisit of tradi-
tional contingency plans and backups which demand reviewing of supplier’s rela-
tionships and creating alternatives for supply chain emergency-like situations. This
would ensure that the possible risks are mitigated optimally. In addition, individual
supplier’s risk assessment can be done in terms of their quick ability to meet the
requirements of retailers. At the same time, strengthen the procurement aspect of
supply chain while focusing upon the right quality at right time at right place.
The rapid replenishment of inventories is not sufficient if there is a violation with
the appropriate quality standards of goods, commodities or products. To ensure the
quality, packaging and transportation need equal emphasis for FMCG products. All
the partners of supply chains therefore need to be made aware about the inability to
tradeoff availability with quality. Regular quality check and monitoring of flow of
goods are critically essential. Information technology for real-time awareness about
the supplier’s activities and schedule need to be developed to meet the required
objectives.

2.3.3 Disintermediation and Digital Shift

After the crisis, the traditional modern retailers inside shopping malls are affected,
and there is a pressing need to re-emphasize on digital platforms and partners. The
coronavirus lockdown has convinced the FMCG suppliers and distributors to tran-
scend their comfort zones in terms of old supply chains. Due to lack of human
resource in shifts, many activities and schedules are put to halt. Disintermediation has
put digital supply chain on priority to ensure continuous supply of essential goods,
viz., staples to households. Digitization was earlier a revolutionary and proactive
measure for firms, but now it has become a reactionary and must have tool. Most
FMCG companies have managed quick tie-ups with delivery companies.
2 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of FMCG Retail Supply … 23

The ongoing crisis of COVID also emphasizes on revisiting the role of intermedi-
aries. The roles and responsibilities must be reassessed to tackle with the emergency-
like situation. While making it more end-consumer-centric, retailers must try to
shorten the supply chain by engaging actively in the distribution systems, be it online
retailing model or peer-to-peer systems.
The re-emergence of online model with increased number of users shopping online
for essential commodities including FMCG and groceries creates a new shift in the
consumer behavior. It is therefore essential to focus on the supporting logistics, order
fulfillment, third-party logistics, procurement management and customer service.
COVID-19 is becoming a catalyst in the process of firms restructuring their global
and local supply chain strategy. It also increased the adoption of digital supply
chain models across the consumer goods and industrial goods. A series of small
and concrete actions taken in a coherent manner can be done to tackle the immediate
challenge. But to make a provision for long-term solution, there is a need for much
overdue transformational shift in the traditional supply chains.

2.4 Preparing for a Resilient FMCG Supply Chain

The design of a resilient supply chain for FMCG goods requires the understanding
and development of adaptive processes with respect to external changes. When the
unregulated distribution system is affected, established big retailers and suppliers
must focus upon customer orientation to keep supply chains intact. More and more
retailers prefer to get their supply chain localized in their respective region. Flexibility
can be considered as the goal of making a supply chain able to alter conditions to
meet an unanticipated situation (Chuu 2011).

2.4.1 Empowering the FMCG Retail Stakeholders

Educating the employees and partners on precautionary methods to tackle COVID-

19 could be a good start. For FMCG retailers, empathy and caring of stakeholder
must be the first and foremost objective. Firms and their partners must increase
awareness among the in-house staffs and external workforce including key suppliers
and partners. The continuous monitoring of the people in front end and customer-
facing profiles should regularly update the health records in real time. Based upon the
age, immunity and potential exposure-related aspects, firms can groom them for an
enriched job profile. Suitable communication strategies can be deployed by FMCG
retail supply chain stakeholders to reduce the impact of end-consumers panic-buying
activities (Hobbs 2020).
Regionalization or localization is another trend for empowering the FMCG retail
stakeholders. There could be high priority decisions related to enhanced distribution
24 R. S. Bhakat and Md. Z. U. Arif

of products procured locally in the vicinity of the consumption hubs. Logistics deci-
sions of FMCG supplies including transport, warehousing, handling and packaging
should be mutually reassessed with all stakeholders. This must be done to empower
the partners and make the supply chain equipped with efficient and agile solutions
(Choi 2020).
At the same time, retailers can also look for exploring the parallel supply chains,
thereby reducing the time to replenish the forecasted or actual demands. Close
interaction between a 3PL and its logistics collaborators also facilitates informa-
tion sharing, preparation and planning, thereby helping to build resilience (Liu and
Lee 2018).

2.4.2 Demand Planning

When some sectors have seen negligible or no demand post COVID disruption, the
FMCG sector is one exclusive sector which has faced delayed demand, decreased
demand and exponentially high demand. Single source of supply, outdated fore-
casting systems and rigid demand planning systems can make the situation worse
(Christopher and Peck 2004).
The demand planning and fulfillment has to be done with a more flexible supply
networks with digital enablers. Essential food products and commodities; healthcare
and hygiene and OTC nutrition products have seen highest movement in FMCG
retail space. Some of the products like sanitizers and hand washes have seen highest
intermittent demands. Consumers are regularly looking out for new and updated
product offerings which they perceive to be healthier and sustainable. This offers an
immense potential for the FMCG players to chalk out the demand of new products
and offerings. FMCG stakeholders must not either overestimate or underestimate
their demands with a rigid overtone. They must consider more flexible and real-time
demand forecasting systems to minimize the idle resources. Optimal sourcing of the
goods is thus a result of more resilient demand planning.

Traditional New Normal

Fast-Moving Consumer Goods FMCG Classification
Higher Demand Fluctuation > Moderate Demand > Low
Demand > Negative Demand

Due to the temporary and long-term shift in consumer behavior, FMCG retailers
must be very careful in demand forecasting, planning and replenishment. The prod-
ucts classified as non-essential and essentials must be treated on preferential basis
depending upon the core competency of retailers and suppliers. All the firms involved
in the end-to-end value chain must redesign the processes and realign the operations
to either increase or decrease the pace of the stock movement. The FMCG retailers
dealing with food and essentials should always be in a lookout for fulfilling a rather
unnaturally high stock requirements.
2 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of FMCG Retail Supply … 25

2.4.3 Suppliers Risk Management

With the increase of unexpected panic buying and stocking behavior, key FMCG
inventories must be managed on high priority. Due to unending list of store brands,
private labels, national brands and global brands of FMCG goods, there is a need
for constant supervision of suppliers risks. Firms must identify the company’s key
suppliers and evaluate their strength and weaknesses to uninterruptedly meet the
retail requirements.
One important approach would be to look for a sustainable consumption model,
dealing with the consumer goods. Apps, aggregators and other similar service
providers can be used to minimize the risk and reinforce the sustainability of an
existing model. Every members of a supply chain right from the producers to the
consumer will be transformed. In the post pandemic world businesses must strive
toward a sustainable model (Sarkis et al. 2020).
Offsetting the supplier’s risks can be done with proper management of suppliers
on the basis of their core capabilities and proneness toward risk. Evert suppliers
inventory, operations and order fulfillment indicators must be captured in real time.
Top-level brands with high priority suppliers can accommodate flexible approaches
in the execution of production, packaging and order fulfillment. Integrated commu-
nications and adaptive contingency plans are to be put in place for any untoward and
critical situations arising out of supply chain disruptions.
The role of intermediaries might also be reassessed as it is through them that
the smallest producers (micro- and small farmers) may coordinate their actions to
produce deeper impact in the provision, and end-consumers can shorten the supply
chain by actively involving in production/distribution systems, viz., online delivery
and/or community-supported agriculture (Jabbour et al. 2020).

2.4.4 Leveraging Information Technology

There is a need for complete alignment of IT systems in FMCG retail environment.

With an outlook of providing 100% efficient safety measures to support the workflow
requirements, information technology can be a great savior for the retailers. Right
from daily check-ins checkouts and shelf-management to crowd management and
monitoring, IT support systems can be a quintessential aspect of safe and healthy
value chain. With the provision of remote work and flexible work style, the role for
the IT solutions is more relevant than ever. Decentralized supply chains demand a
greater role of IT solutions and services.

Supply Chain Supply Chain

Flexibility Adaptability`
26 R. S. Bhakat and Md. Z. U. Arif

The shift toward non-store retailing formats, viz., online shopping, social media
shopping, telephone shopping, WhatsApp shopping etc. can pose serious challenges
to the integration ability of IT systems. The order processing and fulfillment without
compromising upon data security needs robust networks capacity and high-level
testing. At the same time, due to the poor telecom and systems infrastructure mini-
malistic functions must be enabled. The FMCG retailers and partner firms need to
proactively work on the systems requirement, backup support staffs due to absen-
teeism, critical inventory handling and management to ensure operational efficiency.
There is a need to balance both offline and online retail space with IT empowered
workforce.
FMCG companies as well as retail companies can be expected to increase the
investment in technologies with the capacity of problem-solving. This can be done
to materialize the retail plans while making the process more direct, consumer-
centric and hygiene-safe. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the timing and sequence
of bringing back online facilities at different echelons and nodes of the supply chain
had the greatest impact on the supply chain performance (Ivanov 2020).
Better information systems and technologies, encompassing automation systems
will be needed by essential supplies service providers, including FMCG sector. There
is an increase in demand for a responsive information systems that will need partici-
pation from ITES experts in the domain of retailing. In order to quickly bounce back,
IT infrastructures linked with supply chain locations, production facilities, materials
flow, retail store etc. need real-time synchronization. All members of the supply chain
should therefore share information, identify pros and cons and eventually reconfigure
supply chain structure in the new setup (Govindan et al. 2020).

2.5 Conclusion

Continuous reconfiguration of supply chain is the new theme in the post COVID
world for all the FMCG retailers. The whole world is getting ready to adapt to
the new normalcy situation post coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 lockdowns
across the geographies have catapulted FMCG retail firms toward reinvention of
traditional supply chain models. E-commerce, aggregators, large retailers or small
kirana stores are restructuring their overall business model, including the supply
chain models. Keeping the regular flow of product assortments intact across shelves
of various traditional and modern retailers with the right prices and quantity remains
a challenge, and at the same time not to compromise with the health and safety.
It will not be an exaggeration to say the effect of COVID saga on consumer
spending pattern for FMCG products. This trend can be explained in terms of emer-
gency and essential stock perspectives. Retailers who are now implementing flexible
and adaptive supply chain will be the new winner in a new normal supply chain
scenario. Today, FMCG producers and retailers need more flexibility than ever in
their global and local supply chain process to be successful. At the same time, the
2 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of FMCG Retail Supply … 27

positive attitude toward adapting emerging technologies to solve the challenges of

FMCG products movement will be a key distinguishing factor.
In order to make supply chains and logistics management more agile and adaptive,
there must be a consistent attempt to provide high-quality retail service. It is not an
exaggeration to say that supply chains are the life blood of an economy and markets.

References

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Chapter 3
Challenges Faced and Preparedness
of Agriculture Supply Chain During
COVID-19

Nitish Maan, Vijaya Kumar Manupati, Maciel M. Queiroz,

and Biswajita Mohanty

Abstract The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic created catastrophic failure on

global supply chains, particularly its impact on the food supply chain left havoc across
the globe. The objective of this study is to understand the challenges imposed by the
pandemic to the agricultural supply chain in the context of the Indian subcontinent
and also analyse the variations in the arrivals and costs of the products. As a first
step, the conventional flow of perishable food supply chain products from farmers
to end customers has been described. Thereafter, the most widely used perishable
product (tomato) has been chosen and its availability across the Indian regions has
been identified. Consequently, the zones (red, green, and orange) under which these
regions are mapped are identified. Later, with several analyses, the effect of zones
and its impact on product arrival and its cost are discussed in detail. Finally, several
research directions and the challenges to overcome the agricultural supply chain have
been discussed.

Keywords Agricultural supply chain · Pandemic · Conventional supply chain ·

Zones

N. Maan · V. K. Manupati (B)

Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Warangal, Warangal,
India
e-mail: [email protected]
N. Maan
e-mail: [email protected]
M. M. Queiroz
Postgraduate Program in Business Administration, Paulista University−UNIP, São Paulo
04026-002, Brazil
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Mohanty
Vellore Institute of Technology Vellore, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 29

A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_3
30 N. Maan et al.

3.1 Introduction

The agricultural products both perishable and non-perishable together shaped the
food supply chain (Nahmias 2011), where the perishable products are those that
spoil most quickly and have a short life span; on the other hand, the non-perishable
products are those not constrained by time. By their nature, the perishable products
demand a robust supply chain (SC) that ensures fast and efficient distribution of
products, and the non-perishable products demand resilient SC due to its strenuous
procurement and distribution strategies. Considering the high population density of
India, which constitutes around one-sixth of the world population, the complexity of
the SC is further compounded.
The Indian agricultural SC mainly consists of three stages: it starts with the farmers
selling their products in the regional mandis, from where the wholesalers distribute
it to the retailers, and from the retailers, it reaches to the end customers. The distri-
bution of products may seem simple in overview but while considering the time
constraint in perishable and storage constraint in non-perishable products along with
the transportation across the state border, it gets quite complex. India stands at 102
among 117 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2019, and hence it is important to
measure the impact on the agriculture SC and recognize the challenges posed by the
COVID times. Further, COVID-19 leaves challenges across the streams in the SC,
irrespective of various flexibilities that exist at each stage, particularly the food SC is
more vulnerable due to the disruptions at upstream, i.e., harvesting and distribution
stages. Moreover, the perishable SC is more volatile than the non-perishable SC as it
needs regular supply to the mandis, and factors like the fear of spread, lack of labour,
and sealed state borders have resulted in a decline in the supply.
Due to nationwide lockdown, the agricultural SC has affected all streams simulta-
neously never before, starting from farmer’s end, the harvesting of the rabi crops was
at stake due to lack of labour, and harvesting machinery thus impacting the upstream.
The distribution from the wholesalers got affected and the products could not reach
the retailers due to halt and clearance; it takes time in initiating the protocols of
the transportation system by respective state governments. Finally, the product is
delivered to the end customer and the mode of distribution in case of perishable
products consists of city mandis, weekly markets, and street vendors. However, the
major distribution is done by the weekly markets and city mandis, whereas the ratio
of distribution by the street vendors is low. The weekly markets were suspended
completely to curb the community spread and the main markets across many cities
were either closed or shifted due to reporting of COVID-19 cases although it was
later on compensated by increasing the street vendor capacity. In the case of the non-
perishable products, the time buffer gave some advantage and the previous stock was
also utilized to fulfil the demand.
The literature is reviewed based on the perishable product SC, disruptions, and
resilience of the SC during the epidemic, and the effects of COVID-19 on the SCs
of the world in terms of the economy and food security as well. In December 2019,
3 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Agriculture Supply … 31

a series of pneumonia cases emerged in China, later identified as the novel coron-
avirus and named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),
also known as the disease name COVID-19 (Tan et al. 2020), and with the official
announcement of a pandemic, the study of internet searches and streaming depicted
that demand for food and adaptation of healthy food habits grew (Laguna et al. 2020).
The demand for food products was meant to increase but the pandemic brought lock-
downs that disrupted the SC at various levels. The major research developed for a
pandemic is in the area of controlling pandemic with medical resource allocation
and vaccine distribution models (Chick et al. 2008; Mamani et al. 2013; Liu and
Zhang 2016; Büyüktahtakın et al. 2018). A recent study by Queiroz et al. (2020)
reviewed the impact of the epidemic on commercial SCs and their findings revealed
that resource allocation and distribution gain its importance. Golan et al. (2020) iden-
tified lack of resilience in SCs created cascading failure under disruptions where the
current pandemic shows its proof. Hence, there is a need to review SC resilience
and its modelling on networks, including transportation, command, and control. The
loss of agri-business revenue and rise in food insecurity will be the results of the
disruption in the SC as discussed by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization
2020) and impact on the farmers of Haryana (Ceballos et al. 2020) with reports
saying they are unable to afford enough food during the lockdown shows the food
insecurity created due to loss in revenue. In this chapter, the possibilities to over-
come the challenges that occurred due to the pandemic are explored and also find the
possible policies taken by different state governments across the Indian nation that
has brought provisions for buying the products at minimum support price as well as
providing financial assistance.

3.2 Study Area Map of Mandis and Their COVID-19 Zones

In this section, the conventional flow of perishable food SC in the Indian subcontinent
is discussed in detail. The flow of perishable products can be broadly categorized into
three categories, which start with procurement in which the farmer sells the product
in the nearby mandis called Mandi A. From Mandi A, the wholesaler who buys the
product takes care of transportation to move to its regional mandis. The wholesaler
can be from within the state as well as from the other state accomplishing the inter-
state and intra-state transportation, as shown in Fig. 3.1. After the product arrives it
has been moved to the nearby mandis (Mandi B and Mandi C). Now the third stage
of the flow starts with the distribution of the product to the end consumer. The local
retailer and vendors buy the product from the wholesaler at the local mandis (Mandi
B and Mandi C) and distribute the product to the end customers. This flow of products
across perishable SC during the normal times can be called the conventional SC, as
depicted in Fig. 3.1.
The above-shown SC depicts the flow of a single product, but in reality, there
is N number of products flowing into the regional mandis of inter-state and intra-
state via wholesalers, and a single retailer will buy M different products in small
32 N. Maan et al.

Fig. 3.1 The conventional flow of perishable product

quantities from different retailers and distribute them to the end consumer. In this
study, tomato as a perishable product is considered due to its wider use and less
shelf life. Table 3.1 describes the number of states across India the tomato product
is available and their districts with existing mandis. The collected mandis location
for considered perishable product and their respective zones is depicted in Fig. 3.2.

3.3 Analysis of Perishable Products in Different Mandis

During COVID-19

In this section, different parameters of perishable products SC and its behaviour and
effects on COVID-19 have been analysed. However, the nature and behaviour of SC
for other perishable products is almost the same; in this study as the perishable product
tomato is considered. To understand the effects of COVID-19 on complex perishable
SC, the analysis with two variables, i.e., “Arrival Quantity” and “Model Cost” has
been considered. The survey has been conducted with tomato abundant/harvesting
states, districts, and mandis available in India, and its arrival (in quintals) and price
(Rs/quintal) data were acquired for the month of January to June for the years 2017
to 2020 from the National Horticultural Research and Development Foundation
(NHRDF) portal. Microsoft Excel and Python software have been used to perform
data cleaning, and then the mean of arrival quantity and mean price for the past years
were calculated with which the percentage change in arrival (PCAR) quantity and
percentage change in price (PCP) with the 2020 data are established. Based on the
available data, 37 mandis were selected across different states as shown in Table 3.2.
For example, in the market of Delhi state, the arrival (in quintals) for the month of
May from 2017 to 2019 be a1 , a2 , and a3 , while for 2020 be a4 . The mean for a1 , a2 ,
and a3 is denoted by amean. Then the PCAR is given by

a4 − amean
PCAR = ∗ 100
amean
3 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Agriculture Supply … 33

Table 3.1 Considered state, district and mandi

S. No. State District Mandi
1 Andhra Pradesh Chittoor Mulakalacheruvu
2 Chhattisgarh Bilaspur Thipra
3 Delhi Delhi Delhi
4 Gujarat Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot, Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot,
Bhavnagar Bhavnagar
5 Himachal Pradesh Kullu, Mandi, Solan Kullu, Mandi, Solan
6 Haryana Faridabad, Gurugram Faridabad, Gurugram
7 Jammu & Kashmir Jammu Jammu
8 Kerala Thiruvananthapuram Palayam
9 Karnataka Mysore, Kolar, Chickaballapur, Mysore, Kolar,
Bengaluru (Binny Mills) Srinivaspur(Kolar), Binny
Mills, Chickballapur,
Chintamani(Chickballapur)
10 Madhya Pradesh Mandsour Mandsour
11 Maharashtra Aurangabad, Pune Chandrapur, Aurangabad, Chakan (Pune),
Kolhapur, Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Chandrapur, Kolhapur,
Solapur Mumbai, Nagpur, Solapur
12 Odisha Nayagarh, Bhubaneswar, Bahadaholla (Nayagarh),
Ganjam, Betnoi (Mayurbhanj), Bhubaneshwar, Hinjlicut
Bargarh (Ganjam), Betnoi (Ganjam),
Bargarh
13 Punjab Amritsar, Fazilka (Abohar), Amritsar, Abohar(Fazilka),
Bhatinda, Firozpur, Jalandhar Bhatinda, Firozpur, Jalandhar
14 Rajasthan Ajmer, Alwar, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ajmer, Alwar, Jaipur, Jodhpur,
Sriganganagar, Udaipur Sriganganagar, Udaipur
15 Telangana Hyderabad Bowenpally, Gudimalkapur
(District-Hyderabad)
16 Uttar Pradesh Agra, Prayagraj, Ballia, Barely, Agra, Allahabad (Prayagraj),
Deoria, Etah, Etawah, Faizabad, Ballia, Barely, Etah, Etawah,
Saharanpur, Sitapur, Varanasi, Faizabad, Saharanpur, Sitapur,
Aligarh Varanasi, Aligarh
17 West Bengal West Bardaman (Asansol), Asansol, Burdwan
Purba Bardhaman (Burdwan)

The PCAR of Delhi for May month is −51.74%, which signifies that the arrival
for that particular month has decreased by 51.74% in 2020 as compared to the mean
of the arrival during the previous years.
Similarly, the price (Rs/quintal) for the month of May from 2017 to 2019 be p1 ,
p2 , p3 , while for 2020 be p4 . The mean for p1 , p2 , p3 is denoted by pmean. Then the
PCP is given by
34 N. Maan et al.

Fig. 3.2 Study map having mandis and zones

p4 − pmean
PCP = ∗ 100
pmean

The PCP for the same month is −18.80% showing the fall in price for May 2020
by 18.80% as compared with the mean of previous years’ model price. Later on, the
data were plotted in graphs and maps, and the insight into the variations was studied.

3.4 Findings

The PCAR and PCP of different mandis were calculated from January to June by
the method as discussed in Sect. 3.3 for various states across India. With the help of
a histogram, the PCAR and PCA for particular mandis are shown in Fig. 3.3. The
red zone mandis, Mumbai (Maharashtra), Delhi, Faridabad (Haryana), Agra (Uttar
Pradesh), and Bhavnagar (Gujarat), show a trend of negative PCAR throughout, i.e.,
the arrival has decreased as compared to the previous year’s highlighting the effect
COVID-19 on the SC of perishable products. Whereas from the developed histogram,
Mumbai from Maharashtra state follows downward trend in PCAR that can be seen
as −93.26% for the month of May. Looking at the PCP for Mumbai, the graph depicts
a negative trend in that also, but for the Aurangabad mandi of Maharashtra state, the
PCP shows a negative shift as well, maintaining a fall of around 40% throughout and
Table 3.2 Percentage change in arrival quantity and modal price in different mandis in India
S.No. State Market % Change of arrival % Change of price
Jan Feb Mar Apr May June Jan Feb Mar Apr May June
1 Andhra Mulakalacheruvu −22.06 −43.98 −8.40 120.60 0.77 −22.69 27.44 21.39 −5.44 −22.32 −64.38 −46.39
Pradesh
2 Chhattisgarh Thipra −37.74 −71.64 −75.18 141.02 39.78 −1.48 18.65 5.07 −10.37 −6.17 −35.55 −8.85
3 Delhi Delhi −26.98 −85.21 NA −5.19 −51.74 −58.12 90.18 17.98 NA 10.32 −18.85 −30.53
4 Gujarat Ahmedabad −13.29 −3.75 22.94 −67.55 NA −70.32 74.32 −16.52 −51.68 −34.58 NA 36.13
Bhavnagar −61.65 −69.94 −58.48 −52.05 −60.44 −44.41 11.43 8.07 −14.64 −20.93 −14.44 27.77
Rajkot 45.81 3.05 40.36 −7.19 37.78 234.66 24.99 −17.43 −50.00 −5.62 −21.29 −19.42
Surat 6.15 −39.58 −37.68 −53.90 −81.82 −59.95 0.17 −54.48 −47.66 2.65 −44.91 1.24
5 Himachal Kullu 55.28 −8.67 −35.88 −4.17 27.57 32.83 23.83 −15.75 7.15 14.53 −3.16 −6.71
Pradesh Mandi −69.33 −93.48 −86.54 −54.46 −70.77 −15.82 22.94 −16.57 12.18 24.99 −26.36 −21.69
Solan 15.72 −34.67 −19.82 134.90 −55.91 −98.92 29.49 −9.80 −9.34 22.72 −19.32 −54.44
6 Haryana Faridabad 12.53 47.56 14.16 50.23 18.54 −66.56 45.88 14.06 −5.89 35.95 −47.05 −50.46
Gurugram −66.84 −43.97 −41.97 79.96 155.25 −4.79 −18.56 −15.07 −11.80 107.73 −44.00 20.00
7 Jammu & Jammu NA 462.04 15.38 19.72 27.77 19.55 28.30
3 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Agriculture Supply …

−78.69 −35.70 −7.51 NA −0.58

Kashmir
8 Kerala Palayam 0.00 −33.33 −34.50 −41.46 −68.91 −61.25 −3.79 1.45 −26.96 −36.98 −48.23 −23.67
9 Karnataka Binny Mills −10.21 −31.18 −41.63 248.60 88.56 −26.80 29.78 −7.72 −32.89 −47.40 −53.86 −11.61
Chickaballapur −14.91 −76.16 −97.87 46.51 −29.14 57.59 54.74 −31.42 −29.69 −53.32 −62.48 0.23
Chintamani −56.96 −85.77 −95.89 10.79 −30.35 −89.49 −7.31 −57.16 −55.58 −54.94 −68.90 −41.05
10 Madhya Mandsour −10.80 −57.40 −74.47 NA −67.77 −76.67 1.68 32.12 20.91 NA −3.97 7.21
Pradesh
(continued)
35
Table 3.2 (continued)
36

S.No. State Market % Change of arrival % Change of price

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June Jan Feb Mar Apr May June
11 Maharashtra Aurangabad −32.53 0.42 −69.42 −47.51 −43.72 −42.22 37.94 −35.14 −41.95 −41.83 −46.74 −16.82
Mumbai 10.20 −53.36 −55.02 −85.28 −93.26 −81.47 16.78 −5.34 −15.90 −2.71 −17.72 −1.91
Nagpur 4.88 −56.36 −87.88 −90.20 −89.36 −52.87 15.08 −18.29 −14.19 −32.53 −32.45 44.74
12 Orissa Bahadajhola −30.49 −89.77 −98.08 −99.38 −94.36 −83.89 6.18 −17.46 −14.67 −26.61 −37.30 −39.46
Bargarh NA −12.26 −16.99 −33.98 −72.60 −52.15 62.70 −46.49 −12.36 197.17 71.57 −46.34
13 Punjab Abohar −44.51 −20.18 −56.09 −61.22 −95.65 −52.70 46.07 −21.74 −21.58 36.56 25.26 −45.85
Amritsar 109.71 35.33 −4.28 4.93 −22.74 −45.67 0.36 −26.13 −27.12 17.57 −46.17 −7.45
Barnala 59.54 −15.38 26.71 −92.71 −41.42 2.49 10.32 −24.91 −21.77 38.77 −31.42 −36.11
Firozpur 401.23 107.53 −11.63 32.13 0.96 −28.51 38.50 −6.55 −21.69 47.56 −5.98 4.17
14 Rajasthan Ajmer 127.32 −34.22 −20.70 −27.98 −83.35 −76.65 44.11 −3.87 −20.46 46.78 −21.27 −37.51
Alwar −48.75 −79.78 −40.04 −24.81 −67.66 −41.14 68.22 22.15 1.19 −7.87 −42.88 28.50
15 Telangana Gudimalkapur −36.57 NA −50.59 25.85 −32.79 −18.31 61.32 NA −28.37 −56.98 −54.54 −0.42
16 Uttar Agra −5.53 −18.94 −57.93 −61.66 −47.85 −36.24 58.56 34.39 −10.80 31.10 −13.32 −17.62
Pradesh Gaziabad 48.53 −45.48 −67.00 −22.03 −27.95 −64.47 33.01 25.77 −15.03 50.96 13.09 −14.14
Kanpur −55.57 −74.63 −75.95 −55.50 −75.37 −70.00 74.48 72.74 7.02 56.41 12.96 −12.48
Saharanpur −16.04 −62.37 −61.71 2.71 −46.43 −46.42 60.39 43.80 9.35 66.30 49.12 −4.78
Lucknow −17.69 −47.51 −34.07 −29.10 −10.40 −4.17 67.57 76.56 13.26 25.03 −12.85 −14.77
17 West Bengal Asansol −67.29 −14.71 −73.90 1.59 −57.96 −77.01 40.07 48.66 −1.76 −24.71 −35.42 −1.94
N. Maan et al.
3 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Agriculture Supply … 37

Fig. 3.3 Percentage changes in the arrival and price for specific markets based on zone
38 N. Maan et al.

the relationship between PCAR and PCP shows the negative trend simultaneously
which is opposite to that of demand–supply rule. So, in the red zones, a decrease in
PCAR and PCP is present throughout but the important point to notice here is that
supply and price both are falling simultaneously contradictory to the demand–supply
rule, which says that the price goes up when the supply is less.
Considering the orange zone mandis like Gurugram (Haryana), Jammu (Jammu
& Kashmir), Mandsour (Madhya Pradesh), and Palayam (Kerala), PCAR shows a
negative shift as well. While Gurugram and Jammu show a steep positive increase in
PCAR during April, Mandsour and Palayam show a decrease in PCAR. In the case
of orange zone, the PCP is not totally in a negative trend except that of Palayam. In
the case of orange zones, it cannot be said evidently that the demand–supply rule is
defied.
The green zone mandis, Bilaspur (Chattisgarh), Mandi (Himachal Pradesh),
Bhadajhola (Orissa), and Abohar (Punjab), show a negative trend in PCAR. However,
at Abohar mandi, the arrival decreases linearly till May reaching −95.65 with a little
recovery to −52.7% in June but still negative. The PCP for Abohar is negative for
February and March, showing a drop of approximately 20% and shifting to the posi-
tive side with rise more than 20% in the month of April and May. For the month of
June, both PCAR and PCP show a drop of above 40%, which is again contradictory
to the demand–supply rule. Bhadajhola mandi shows consistent negative PCAR and
PCP even if it belongs to the green zone. While looking at the mandis and considering
zones, it is evident that the drop-in arrival can be witnessed throughout while the
red zones showed the consistent drop in price as compared to the orange and green
zones, but the price drop is present in orange and green zones also even if the supply
has shortened.

3.5 Future Directions

Food insecurity and loss in agri-business are the two major concerns resulting from
the pandemic disruption, and the threat of multiple waves of COVID-19 hitting the
same region can also be witnessed across the world. If we look into the agricultural
sector, we need to recognise that preservation and supply of finished products are
not the only goal, but identifying other factors like raw material, pesticides, avail-
ability of labour, and harvesting machinery are equally important. For identifying and
understanding the importance of these factors, it is vital to study the policies taken up
by the various governments across the globe in the context of the agricultural supply
chains to tackle the pandemic and then evaluating the resilience and cost parameters.
The SC based on the policies needs to be analysed based on transportation costs,
inventory, and ability to serve rural as well as urban populations. In India, 95% of
the purchased goods are sold by the private sector and only 5% through public distri-
bution system (PDS) (Reardon et al. 2020), so the SC cannot be fully controlled by
3 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Agriculture Supply … 39

the government and the policies need to be private sector-oriented. These policies
can further be mixed and evolved to prepare not just for the ongoing crises but any
future threats as well.

3.6 Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has stalled every SC globally causing disruptions, and an
analysis here depicts that there is a disruption in the supply of perishable products to
the markets or mandis as well. The reasons for the disruption in the flow of products to
the mandis can be lack of labourer workers, implementation of nationwide lockdown,
fear of COVID spread among the public, and creation of containment zones to curb
the spread which also disrupts the flow of end-consumer to the local mandis. If we
look at the SC of perishable products as shown in Fig. 3.1 with the three stages of
procurement, transportation, and distribution, as the supply of product declined to
the mandis, we can speculate the disruption in the procurement stage, i.e., farmers are
not able to deliver the product to the mandis and it can be inferred that the distribution
of product to the end-consumer is also declining because food is an essential product
and the decrease in demand is not certain from the consumer but can be due to
inaccessibility of the end-consumer to reach the product which can lead to a decline
in the price of the product as well. Thus, if the SC of perishable products is disrupted,
then to save the value of the product, it needs to be preserved for which the demand
for cold storage facilities, refrigerated carriers, proper packing, and handling and
real-time tracing comes into play.

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Chapter 4
Challenges Faced and Preparedness
of Humanitarian Supply Chain During
COVID-19

R. Vezhavendan

Abstract Today, we are faced with a pandemic which has already infected several
millions of people worldwide and the virus is out on a spree to infect more and more
people. This scenario is likely to continue until a vaccine is found and administered
to a majority of the population. The human race had not anticipated such a disruption
of supply chains on such a massive scale. All the transportation and movement of
goods had come to a standstill for a varied period of time in various countries. This
resulted in disruptions and shortfalls in various parts of the world. The demand for
several products fell, while demand for several products increased conversely. A
humanitarian supply chain could be described as relief material supplies reaching
the right people at the time of need. This is required to save several precious lives
from being lost due to lack of access to products that are in need. This book chapter
comprises discussion on the various challenges faced by relief works that need to be
executed and how we need to be prepared for any eventualities that may arise at any
point of time. This chapter is intended to provide insights into various logistic issues
and preparedness levels of mankind to face the challenges posed by COVID-19.

Keywords Humanitarian supply chain · Goods · Challenges · Emergency

preparedness

4.1 Introduction

Humanitarian supply chain (HSC) is the term coined to describe the flow and supply
of relief materials to reach the right people at the right time, especially when disasters
strike at unexpected times. Today, we are faced with a pandemic due to the spread
of the corona virus (COVID-19) which is considered to have originated from the
wet market of Wuhan, China. As the virus has spread to every nook and corner
of the world, it has caused unprecedented disruptions and damage to human lives

R. Vezhavendan (B)
Department of Manufacturing Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute
of Technology, Vellore 632014, Tamil Nadu, India
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 41

A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_4
42 R. Vezhavendan

over the globe along with both direct and indirect damage to several products. The
virus outbreak has caused a huge unexpected humanitarian crisis and resulted in
unprecedented challenges to human lives and health across the globe, and the global
economy as a whole has taken a hit. There does not seem to be any respite for the
outbreak, and on the other hand, mankind is faced with several severe shortages,
especially products related to food and health. We can say that presently we are
faced with a “supply chain shock” due to the disruptions worldwide. The world was
not anticipating even anything close to such a thing and was completely unprepared
for such a massive outbreak on a global scale. This crippled several activities along
the lives of the whole mankind. Nothing of this sort was expected and there was
absolutely no preparation. Had the world expected such a massive outbreak and
anticipated things to go haywire over the COVID-19 virus, things could have been
completely different. Moreover, the whole of humankind did not expect the COVID-
19 pandemic to be lasting for several months which could be extending for a much
longer time.

4.2 The Humanitarian Supply Chain

The impact of COVID-19 can be expected to be short-lived, but the effect it may
have in the long term at this point of time is highly unpredictable. We can expect
and experience unprecedented stress on the supply chains related to food due to
the distress faced due to shortage of farm labour, production shortfalls, procurement
shortfalls, and problems faced by the transport and logistics sector coupled with a shift
in the demands for products. The moves that many governments of several countries
have taken, especially the lockdowns to contain the spread of the COVID-19, had
resulted in stoppage of production of several essential commodities that would be
required for humanitarian aid. Further, facts have pointed out that the uncertainties
that have been caused by such moves, which is known as the “Whiplash effect”,
refer to the fluctuations seen in the inventory due to the fluctuations in demand.
As the demand increases, the inefficiencies in the supply chain can be felt. This is
due to panic-buying attitude of customers, wherein customers fear unavailability of
certain products (such as hand sanitizers and masks) and end up buying and stocking
more than what is needed to stay comfortable later. The supply chains based on
humanitarian relief have to provide the correct quantity of products at the right time
to the right locations, so as to help relief workers to save lives and abet suffering
of humans which are constrained by limited financial backing (Beamon and Balcik
2008). It is believed that pre-positioned warehouses located at strategic points would
be a necessity and also be of great value and help to see to it that the supplies needed
are available to the needy when they are required and for the facilitation of faster
responses (Balcik et al. 2010).
A typical humanitarian supply chain environment is generally complex and chal-
lenging (Seyed Hamid et al. 2020). It comprises people at the disaster struck site (as
4 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Humanitarian Supply … 43

State/Central Public
Government organizaƟons

Public
Local Donors
organizaƟons
Warehouse
/collecƟon Consumers
point
InternaƟonal Public
Government organizaƟons

Public
InternaƟonal
organizaƟons
Donors

Fig. 4.1 A typical humanitarian supply chain flow

the consumer) to whom all humanitarian aid needs to be supplied. Unlike commer-
cial supply chains, the suppliers are the government of the state or country, local
donors, international governments and international donors. The products sent by
these donors reach the nearest port or warehouse or collection point where it is
needed and the distribution begins through the public organizations, private orga-
nizations, community-based organizations and individual volunteers. These act as
middle men in the supply chain to reach the consumers, with no monetary profit in
mind. Figure 4.1 is a representation of a typical humanitarian supply chain.
There are five important components of the humanitarian supply chain, namely
man, money material, machine and information. All the five components need to be
available at a time at the required places for the humanitarian supply chain to be up
and effective. Men in the form of volunteers and government/public organizations
need to be deployed who need money to get required material from various sources
such as government of the state or centre or international governments donors who
may be from within the state or country or even international donors and these
materials required to be processed by machines such as vehicles that can travel on
land, water and air and information for and to all these results in effective distribution
of humanitarian aid. The right kind of men need to be there at the right place and at
the right time to effectively use the material received from various sources.
Money would help in mobilizing the right kind of material and help in putting in
place the right machines to effectively execute the work for which all these resources
have been put in place. Figure 4.2 represents the various components that need to
come together for the humanitarian supply chain to be effective.
44 R. Vezhavendan

Fig. 4.2 The components of

a humanitarian supply chain Man

InformaƟon Money

HSC

Machine Material

4.3 The Role Played by Humanitarian Supply Chains

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of several millions of people
around the globe, especially in the developing countries like India, and several
other Asian countries along with their public health systems, by bringing the liveli-
hood and economies all over the world to a grinding halt. While countries with
strong economies have been able to manage the onslaught, the countries with weak
economies comprising population depending on day-to-day earnings for their bread
and butter have been the worst hit. Humanitarian supply chains play a vital role when
such disaster strikes. Words are no match to express the huge solace that humani-
tarian supply chains provide during bad times. Their contribution in the mitigation
of the negative effects of the disasters with respect to human life loss and economic
losses are incomparable. Aids on humanitarian grounds are rushed to the areas with
vulnerable population, especially to the population facing food crisis and the popu-
lation affected by health crisis. Responses to disasters are aimed at offering help
to maximum number of victims possible and as quickly as possible without taking
much consideration of the socio-economic context (Kunz and Gold 2017).

4.4 Commercial Supply Chain Versus Humanitarian

Supply Chain

According to www.investopedia.com, a commercial supply chain is referred to as

simply supply chain which is a network between suppliers and customers to supply
customer-desired products to the end users, also known as final buyer. This network is
a consortium of varied elements comprising activities, men, information, resources,
organizations etc. The supply chain is also a representation of all the steps it takes for
the product to reach the customer from the supplier from its original state. It comprises
4 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Humanitarian Supply … 45

a series of steps and activities that are involved before the customer receives the prod-
ucts or services, which may involve movement of goods and transformation of raw
materials into finished products, followed by transportation of the finished products
and distribution of the same to the end user/consumer at the least possible price and
make highest profits possible. The suppliers (vendors), warehouses, transporters,
distributors and retailers form the entities who are involved in the supply chain. The
supply chain comprises functions that start right from order receiving to supplying
the product to the customer. The functions of a supply chain comprise activities
starting from product development, marketing, production, operations, distribution
of the products, finance and provision of service to customers.
The International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) defines humanitarian supply
chain as procuring and supplying supplies and providing services that have been
requested at the place where and when they are needed such that the best value for
money is ensured. The requirements immediately after the disaster are generally food,
water, temporary shelter and medicine, which are necessary for survival. Humani-
tarian supply chains perform the task of linking the suppliers to the customers which is
the fulfilment of demand by supply. Ergun et al. (2009) have mentioned that generally
a typical humanitarian supply chain comprises governments and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). The government has control over both political and economic
conditions and decisions which have a direct effect on the process of supply chain
activities. There are several teething problems associated with the coordination and
management of supply chains related to disaster management activities because there
are several uncertainties that may exist along the length and breadth of the supply
chain. There are several players associated with the supply network which is large
and it becomes difficult to coordinate with all of them together in order to deliver the
goods. A very important point of note is that though there may be cultural, political,
geographical as well as historical differences between the collaborators, the need for
collaboration as well as specialization of tasks allotted to them needs to be there in
place in the humanitarian supply chains (Van Wassenhove 2006).
The most notable differences between the two are that commercial supply chains
are based on products, while humanitarian supply chains are based on people, and
the commercial supply chains work for profit while the humanitarian supply chains
are not for profit.
Table 4.1 gives a description of commercial supply chains vs humanitarian supply
chains.

4.5 Effect of Supply Chains on Daily Lives and the Effect

of COVID-19 on Supply Chain

Generally, the importance of supply chains and how they touch our daily lives on a
continuous basis are unknown to the common man and it is simply taken for granted.
Supply chains are rightfully called as the central nervous system of the business
46 R. Vezhavendan

Table 4.1 Difference between commercial and humanitarian supply chain

S. No. Commercial supply chain Humanitarian supply chain
1 Business-oriented and designed to make People-oriented and designed to serve
profits people
2 Expected to be present all through the Expected to be present only when there is a
year need (disaster including epidemics and
pandemics)
3 Demand is relatively stable and Demand is unstable and unpredictable
predictable
4 Quantity and time of demand can be Quantity and time of demand cannot be
estimated estimated
5 Reaches through middlemen Generally no middlemen involved. Mostly
volunteers and government staff are
involved
6 Well-defined and well-planned methods Inventory control is tough and limiting
are used for determination of level of because lead times, demand and locations
inventory where lead time, demand for of demands are highly variable in nature.
product and target customer and level of
service is the basis
7 Middlemen determine the lead time Material flow determines the lead time
8 Fixed and well-defined network Unknown network
9 No last mile adjustments done Many last mile adjustments required
10 Profit maximizing is the goal Saving lives and reaching people are the
goals
11 High quality and low cost is the objective Reaching as quickly as possible and to as
many as possible is the objective
12 Performance is gauged based on resource Performance gauged based on output
13 Reliable data and information are Unreliable data and information or no data
available and information available
14 End user pays End user receives without paying
15 Products received from known sources Products received from unknown sources

economy. All the transport vehicles we see on the roads, the trains on the rail tracks,
the flights in the sky and ships in the seas are all the physical manifestations of the
supply chains that are making life easier for us and helping us get the things we need
at the desired time.
Customers have started having high expectations in terms of the products reaching
them on time and in the required quantities at required locations because their works
depend on the timely arrival and availability. Further, the supply chains have started
playing a vital role with respect to the society. The societal role of the supply chain
is so important in today’s world that we can say that the very existence of human life
today is dependent on supply chains as they deliver the basic necessities such as food
and water to all parts of the world. Moreover, supply chains play a major role in the
supply and distribution of healthcare products, such as medicines, vaccines, gloves,
4 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Humanitarian Supply … 47

chemicals, lifesaving healthcare equipment etc., to save a large number of lives on

a daily basis. Supply chains have a profound effect on the economy of a country. It
can be observed that the developed nations in the world are the nations that have the
best infrastructure too, such as excellent roads and road connectivity, vast tracks of
railroads, the best airports and excellent seaports. These help goods and supplies to
reach consumers at the shortest possible time at the lowest possible costs. On the
other hand, it may be observed that the underdeveloped nations are the nations that
lack such supply chain infrastructure. When products can reach consumers at low
cost in a short span of time, it helps customers to buy more products and thereby
increases their standard of living as well due to the availability of more income. It
either acts as a lever to economic development or ends up as an impediment to the
economic development. Several jobs have also been created in the field of supply
chain across the world to operate and manage all the supply chain related activities,
such as transporting, warehousing, inventory, packaging delivery etc.
With the onset of corona virus the governments of various countries started taking
drastic control measures to curb the spread of the corona virus infection across the
globe. The measures included full lockdowns and partial lockdowns which resulted in
the closure of several industries temporarily for a certain period of time and later they
were allowed to commence production with partial attendance of employees. This
led to stoppages of production in many cases and decreased production of products
in case of some industries. This led to the unavailability of many products for the
customers. To add to the woes of the customers, the retailers were not allowed to
be open for business, making it all the more difficult for customers to have access
to products. This demand and short supply resulted in increase of prices of products
exorbitantly. The Institute of Supply Chain Management of USA conducted a survey
and had given the following that as on 25 March 2020,
• More than half of the Tier 1 firms that sources components from China had longer
lead times compared to the previous year
• Chinese manufacturers were operating at 50% production capacity, and 56%
employees were only involved in the production
• 23% companies reported that they were facing supply chain disruptions
• 62% respondents reported delayed orders from China
• more than half of the companies faced difficulty.

As each and every day passes by, we are able to feel the repercussions of the outbreak
of the corona virus being felt. Despite several efforts to curb the infections and the
spread of the virus, the onslaught of the virus remains unabated, thus resulting in
loss of life and loss of livelihoods as well. China has been considered as the de facto
factory of the world and the temporary closure of several factories in China to control
the spread of coronavirus had resulted in several disruptions in the supply chain and
caused severe damage to the economy, which the world has not faced of late.
48 R. Vezhavendan

4.6 Challenges Faced by Humanitarian Supply Chains

This topic is meant to provide key insights into the various challenges and limitations
of the humanitarian supply chains with a special reference to the COVID-19. The
government as well as relief organizations involved in humanitarian relief provisions
are faced with several unprecedented challenges when disaster strikes. Generally,
humanitarian supply chains are circumstances which require very quick responses to
the needs that are unforeseeable and this makes it difficult to plan properly and provide
support for actual demands (Bag et al. 2020). The most common challenge faced is
in terms of mobilization of resources. Generally, men, material, money, machines
and information would be mobilized and brought together from various parts of the
state/country as per the need of the hour from the places they are available. Further,
humanitarian organizations are facing more challenges to improve their efficiencies
and effectiveness in their efforts. The reasons for these challenges are due to lack of
trust, bad collaboration and incompetent response ability when it is needed (Dubey
et al. 2020).
But the corona virus pandemic has created a completely unique and different situ-
ation. In normal conditions of distress and disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions, floods, wildfires or hurricanes, goods produced elsewhere would be rushed
to the areas of requirement as and when required as the distress and disaster is confined
to a particular local area only and the resources required to mitigate the issues are
mobilized from the surrounding areas or from the nearest possible areas. That is,
when Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India suffers, the areas around Chennai do not suffer
and essentials can be sourced from nearby towns or cities. However, pandemics
and epidemics are global in nature. They know no boundaries and borders. There-
fore, the efforts to fight against pandemics and epidemics like the present COVID-19
requires a large amount of coordinated teamwork and collaboration of every indi-
vidual. There is no better time than a pandemic for the entire world to come together
and act as one. We need to be reminded that if we do not do so, the result is going
to be entirely catastrophic. Almost every country and every state in these countries
is faced with several issues related to the COVID-19. Due to lockdowns imposed
by the governments of countries and states, the production of several essential items
required for humanitarian causes had come to a halt. When there is no availability of
essential goods, where is the question of the goods reaching the people in distress?
Hence availability of essential commodities became scarce. This led to inability to
provide humanitarian assistance. To add fuel to fire, transportation services such as
trains, air cargo, sea cargo, public transport etc. had been stopped at several places
leading to inability to transport the least available commodities too. Such challenges
had added to the already existing woes in the form of price hikes due to the demand
making it prohibitively expensive to provide relief assistance. This was not the case
with just the developing countries with dense populations but it was the same case
even with the developed nations across the globe.
4 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Humanitarian Supply … 49

The COVID-19 is not only a humanitarian crisis but also a health crisis too. This
is a reflection of a unique crisis that mankind has not witnessed before. Hence the
challenges are also expected to be unique.
Given below is a list of challenges faced due to the prevalence of COVID-19.

4.6.1 Demand Uncertainty

The type of demand and the quantity of demand is completely unknown. Since
the consumers are unknown, their needs and requirements are also unknown. The
demand for the products keeps varying depending on the intensity of the impact of
the crisis. How much of which product/service is needed is highly unpredictable.
This may vary depending on the population size and the population density in the
particular area affected.

4.6.2 Lack of Training

The type of crisis faced by people may not be the same every time. It keeps varying
depending on the type of crisis and intensity of the crisis, population affected etc.
Hence even if the product/service providers are trained, they may not be effective to
handle all kinds of situations and crisis. Further there is no standard training module
that can be effective against all crises.

4.6.3 Lack of Skills

Teams deployed for emergency response during crisis are required to make assess-
ments of the situation and collect data and information of requirements of consumers.
There is always a need for rapid response which is accompanied with both physical
and mental stress for the volunteers. They are faced with unknown and harsh fields,
cultures, people, political situations, rough weather etc. These complicate the ability
to execute the intended relief work.

4.6.4 Lack of Technology

In today’s global world, commercial supply chains are widely supported by tech-
nology to respond to the needs of the customers and they are heavily dependent on
technology. But in case of humanitarian supply chain, due to the uncertainty and
lack of consistencies in the crisis, technology is not able to help the volunteers to
50 R. Vezhavendan

a large extent as they have to be customised depending on the requirement and the
customization takes time which is scarce during the crisis and becomes obsolete after
the crisis to be used again for another crisis.

4.6.5 Lack of Predictability

The needs of the consumers during a crisis is highly unpredictable. The demand for
products needs to be assessed only after reaching the spot and analysing the situation.
Demand spikes can be felt several times during the relief operations. The needs could
be communicated only after the analysis and the requirements can be mobilized.

4.6.6 Lack of Constant Supply

Since the demand cannot be predicted it is very difficult to provide consumers with a
continuous supply. Further, the products are not manufactured to cater to orders. They
are supplied by donors and the governments based on anticipated needs only. More-
over, if more than what is required is supplied, the products will not be consumed,
and will get wasted, especially perishable items and if there is an under supply then
the requirements are not fulfilled. Hence it has always been felt that supply cannot
be constant and continuous.

4.6.7 Politics and Culture

If the areas are politically and culturally sensitive, there is a high likelihood of
humanitarian aids being politicized and rejected due to cultural indifferences. And
criticism and dissatisfaction is likely to be high. Consumers and political parties
would complain of inefficiencies which are likely to lower the morale of the relief
works resulting in lack of willingness to serve such sensitive areas. The human
factors have a huge role to be played in any humanitarian aid, which includes politics,
language and customs. If criticized the response operations are subject to severe stress
during execution of relief operations.

4.6.8 Efficiency and Success Measurement

In commercial supply chains the efficiency and success of the supply chain can be
measured by parameters such as time and customer satisfaction along with profits
attained. But in case of humanitarian supply chain the efficiency and success lies in
4 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Humanitarian Supply … 51

the ability to reach the maximum number of products to the maximum number of
people. Unfortunately, the number of people who require the product/services are
unknown and cannot be calculated accurately too. Hence the efficiency and success
cannot be determined.

4.6.9 Lack of Visibility

Visibility along the length of the supply chain called end-to-end visibility is
completely absent in the humanitarian supply chain. On one end are the suppliers,
viz., donors and government, and the volunteers are at the other end. People at the
other end do not know where the products are until it reaches them. Hence the lack
of information about the products in transit results in lack of visibility in the supply
chain.

4.6.10 Presence of Opportunists and Fraud

A few of the people who play a supporting role for money play havoc by charging
exorbitantly for services as they look at the humanitarian crisis as an opportunity
to make money. To add fuel to fire some insane opportunists indulge in fraud using
trust and inabilities as the platform to loot. These factors result in breach of trust and
inefficiencies in the supply chain process.

4.7 Causes for Humanitarian Supply Chain Disruptions

Today’s world is highly interconnected and this interconnectivity is associated with

several risks. According to Roberta et al. (2015), the suppliers are subjected to more
work and stress when the humanitarian supply chain is expanded geographically. The
probability of disruption increases when the supply chains are magnified and control
over the activities become more difficult. Humanitarian organizations generally have
a large employee attrition rate and do not have the required training in a professional
way regarding planning of emergency response and inefficient usage of technology
(Sandwell 2011) and the supply chain planning is neglected (Taylor and Pettit 2009)).
The disaster response performance would be much better if the preparedness for
disasters is good (Van Wassenhove 2006).
52 R. Vezhavendan

4.7.1 Lack of Information about Demand

Disruptions in all facets of supply chains and lockdowns in several parts of the world
have resulted in non-availability of information of demands for products and closure
of several communication channels temporarily. This has resulted in an information
blackout about the demands.

4.7.2 Politics of the Local Government

Politicians are notoriously known for the games they play and utilization of oppor-
tunity to garner votes and create a good image for themselves and get a good name.
They generally try to take credit for all the good deeds and blame the opposition
for all the misdeeds. This results in unprecedented delays in products reaching the
needy people on time.

4.7.3 Corruption and Fraud

A few dirty minded and highly self-centred individuals who never care for others
end up committing frauds and try to make money out of every opportunity they
get. They try to fix commissions and seek bribes for things such as permissions for
relief materials distribution etc. Corruption and specifically, bribery can result in
permissions to supply substandard products to customers causing grave dangers to
the health and lives of the customers.

4.7.4 Lack of Product Availability

Humanitarian supply chains are faced with a need for several products at a very
short notice and it would be forced to cater to the needs with limited resources and
compromised infrastructure. When disaster strikes, the suppliers of products see it
as an opportunity to make profits and end up hiking the prices, thereby making
the products more dear. Even artificial demands are created to cash in on available
short-term opportunities.
4 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Humanitarian Supply … 53

4.7.5 Lack of Funds

To keep the engine chugging and alive, one of the most important resources required
is the availability of funds. The need and importance of funds is very evident from
the request for donations toward the Chief Minister’s and Prime Minister’s relief
fund every time there is a disaster anywhere in the country. Funds are required to
mobilize resources and products from suppliers to the needy and the humanitarian
volunteers for their basic needs.

4.7.6 Lack of Experience and Expertise

Most of the people involved in the relief operations are volunteers who come together
to help the suffering people only when disaster strikes. They are not professionals
and hence lack professional experience and the expertise to carry our relief activities
as they are supposed to be carried out. The lack of experience and expertise results
in inefficient supply of deliverables to the needy people.

4.7.7 Lack of Volunteers and Donors

Volunteers and donors have a major role to play in the fulfilment of a humani-
tarian supply chain and non-availability of volunteers and donors can cause severe
disruptions in the humanitarian supply chains. Though this may not happen many
a times, there is a small possibility of non-availability of donors and volunteers.
Non-availability of donors will make it difficult to procure products for disbursal,
and non-availability of volunteers will affect the distribution and execution process.

4.8 Preparedness of Humanitarian Supply Chain

Disasters have always been sudden and have an augmented occurrence which ends
up pressurising the organizations that provide relief activities (Azmat et al. 2019).
According to the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC), the preparedness for
mitigating and handling disasters refers to the steps taken to be ready and anticipate
the effects of disasters.
Though several attempts have been made in the field of humanitarian supply
chain, management and disaster response, we have a long way to go to reach good
standards of providing response as we are faced with the limitation of inability to
properly identify and structure the challenges in humanitarian supply chains (Sahebi
et al. 2017).
54 R. Vezhavendan

It is the prediction ability that plays a vital role whenever there is a possibility
of disaster prevention and mitigation of disaster impacts, especially on the vulner-
able population, to respond on time whenever required and cope with the impact
effectively.
IFRC further states that preparedness for disaster is continuous in nature and that
the process is integrated, which is a result of a variety of means for reduction of risks
and resources, instead of being a set of distinct activities by itself. The contributions
are required from several areas, ranging from logistics, training, healthcare, recovery,
livelihood, institutional development etc.
Being prepared becomes a platform for designing and coordinating planning activ-
ities as effectively as possible. Preparedness not only helps in effective implementa-
tion of the efforts put in for response but also reduces duplication of work and prevents
reinventing the wheel. Preparedness cannot emanate from one single source but it is a
result of contributions linked to all areas of the humanitarian supply chain. Prepared-
ness can result in saving several lives and the livelihood of many people and help
people return to their normal life as quickly as possible in the shortest possible time
period.
Generally, the humanitarian supply chain is considered to be unique but the
humanitarian supply chain in the COVID-19 context is considered to be even more
unique because several restrictions have been imposed by the governments to curtail
the spread of the virus. Generally, the HSC operates on projects that are critical
missions, where time is considered to be the most important factor. Hence prepared-
ness is an important factor that needs to be taken into consideration for handling the
COVID-19 pandemic. During the preparatory phase of a pandemic a contingency
plan has to be installed and adopted. The key stakeholders for a humanitarian supply
chain are donors, logistics providers and volunteers. When these three important
stakeholders are prepared, the response is much better and effective, but unfortu-
nately we also have to accept the fact that crises and pandemics do not announce
their arrival but come in so fast and suddenly that preparation cannot be fulfilled. The
response phase takes over as after the disaster strikes and preparation for response
becomes more important than anything else. Hence it is important that we invest
more in the preparation phase to tackle uncertainties and disasters better. Pettit et al.
2011, through their studies have revealed that more lives could be saved by being
well prepared during the preparation stage rather than investing materials and money
during the operational stages of the efforts related to relief. According to Van Wassen-
hove (2006), there are claims that 60–80% of the disaster relief work comprises
logistics, and the easy way to achieve goals during such efforts is by providing logis-
tics operations and supply chain management systems that are effective and efficient.
Hence capacity building of humanitarian logistics and attaining operational effective-
ness have become the need to form the needed foundation for humanitarian efforts of
relief undertaken by the international community, and according to Thomas (2005),
the ability of the logisticians to support buying, transportation and receive supplies
at the place where humanitarian relief is required determines the response time of
the humanitarian aid after disaster strikes. Preparation can be done with the help of
a plan where a plan is a set of activities that need to be executed, including what
4 Challenges Faced and Preparedness of Humanitarian Supply … 55

works need to be carried out, who will be responsible for what activity and how the
resources will be mobilized from where. In order to be prepared, plans need to be in
place at the local, regional, state and national level. During preparation several factors
have to be taken into account, such as expected demand, logistic and infrastructure
support, ability and capability to respond etc. Preparedness needs to also include a
contingency plan for the already made plan. Other things that need to be considered
while preparing for tackling disasters and pandemics is standard operating proce-
dures (SOP) and standard response procedures (SRP). The Governments generally
have their own lists, responsibilities, SOPs, SRSs, priorities, action plans etc. and so
do humanitarian organizations. Preparedness is all about having a response system
in place. However, one needs to understand that 100% preparation is impossible but
at the same time, planning and preparation helps in providing better responses in
times of need.

4.9 Discussion

With the current COVID-19 pandemic playing havoc across the globe, it has resulted
in shortages of supplies of very basic needs to both live and save lives of people.
Scarcity of food, medicines and healthcare equipment has started to surface due to
the highly infectious nature of the corona virus. A very important point of note here
is that the pandemic has led to disruptions of several supply chains, which include
both the commercial supply chains and humanitarian supply chains. The main cause
of disruptions is completely man-made. In order to curb the spread of the infections,
several restrictions had been imposed on the commercial supply chains, which in
turn has taken a toll on the humanitarian supply chain as well. This chapter has tried
to explain what a humanitarian supply chain is in comparison to the commercial
supply chain and how they function. The various challenges faced and the reasons
for the disruptions of the humanitarian supply chain have been discussed in this
chapter. Discussion related to proper planning and execution of the plans and the
limitations and constraints related to the supply of materials by the humanitarian
supply have been discussed along with the preparedness levels that need to be in
place to handle the problems arising due to the pandemic. Also, the ways and means
need to be chalked out to mitigate the shortages during the pandemic times have also
been mentioned.

4.10 Conclusion

The humanitarian supply chain is very essential part of the existence of humans, and
the management of the humanitarian supply chain is a very complex process subject
to constraint by several limitations, such as availability of supplies, availability of
volunteers, availability of machines etc. The emphasis needs to be on effective and
56 R. Vezhavendan

efficient mobilization of supplies, resources to take the supplies, and the required
people at the time of need in required quantities at the required time in the quickest
possible way at the least possible cost. In order to execute the humanitarian supply
chain process effectively and efficiently, planning and preparation needs to be done
perfectly. Since preparation and planning during a pandemic cannot be perfect, it is
the need of the hour to keep the stakeholders always ready with the best possible
plan and the maximum possible preparedness to save lives as much as possible.

References

Azmat, M., Atif, M., & Kummer, S. (2019). Identification and prioritization of critical success
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theory. International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, 20(2), 85–104.
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Chapter 5
Supply Chain Adoption During
COVID-19 Lockdown: Global Scenario

Lenin Nagarajan, Siva Kumar Mahalingam, Jayakrishna Kandasamy,

and Selvakumar Gurusamy

Abstract This chapter presents an assessment of the implications of the COVID-

19 pandemic for supply chains and its flexibility to face the demand of products
needed by the general public. The disruption caused by the COVID virus occurrence
have created the abrupt impacts on consumer behavior and their preferences. Due to
these impacts, consumers are now increasingly exercising care on what, where, and
how they buy. The panic buying behavior of the consumers also creating the shocks
on demand of products. The effects of demand-side shocks on the supply chains
are discussed in this chapter with respect to key items like food and medicines
and the rapid change in consumption patterns. Potential supply-side disruptions to
supply chains are assessed, including the ingredients to make foods and medicines,
workers scarcity, disruptions to transportation, and the issues related with supply
of the products between the states and the countries. Further, this chapter addresses
long-lasting effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the nature of supply chains, including
the growth of the online products delivery sector, and the extent to the supply chain
adoption by the priority of “local” food supply chains during COVID-19 lockdown.

Keywords COVID-19 · Panic buying behavior · Demand-side shocks ·

Supply-side disruptions · Supply chain adoption

L. Nagarajan (B) · S. K. Mahalingam

Mechanical Engineering, Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D
Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai 600 062, Tamil Nadu, India
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Kandasamy
School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore 632 014, Tamil Nadu,
India
S. Gurusamy
Mechanical Engineering, SSN College of Engineering, Chennai 603 110, Tamil Nadu, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 57

A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_5
58 L. Nagarajan et al.

5.1 Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has disclosed the requirement of growth of supply chains
to satisfy the fluctuations in demand of food and medicine in order to minimize risk.
It looks that this pandemic has created situations in which all movement of products
has stopped. Hence, this pandemic can be compared with world war situation (Seric
et al. 2020). Though the numerous resemblance between these two, there may be
few disparities like residing-in rather than called out to facilitate, and a lockdown on
businesses rather than increasing production. However, both pandemic and world war
situations changed the business landscape abruptly, especially the businesses on food
and medicines. During this pandemic, the supply chains have been required to adjust
quickly to handle the demand-side shocks due to the purchasing and consumption
pattern, panic buying, in addition to handling the supply-side disruptions due to
resource and worker’s scarcity and trouble in transportation and product’s supply
systems (Hobbs 2020). This chapter addresses the challenges that food and medicine
supply chains faced globally during the present disaster and provides the strategies
and policies to improve the adoption of supply chain. During this chapter writing,
the world is presently in the middle of the pandemic. It is more difficult to address all
the implications without a clear picture about length and breadth of the pandemic.
This chapter addresses an early assessment of few potential implications for food
and medicine supply chains.

5.2 Issues on Demand Side

The major issues on demand side have been identified from the consumer-driven
businesses by interacting with the retailers and consumers with respect to supply
chain perspective. Important issues are detailed below.

5.2.1 Uncertainty from Day-Zero

The real-time requirement of consumers is to be analyzed for the procurement of

food items and medicines by retailers under multiple scenarios. Especially during
this COVID-19 pandemic, the retailers of consumer goods like food and medicine are
facing out-of-stock situations, as consumers are reacting to this uncertainty by excess
buying. Day-zero means the date from which the lockdown restrictions implemented
on business and on consumer’s movement toward purchase (Razdan 2020). It is quite
difficult to predict and manage the stocks of food and medicines due to this uncertainty
in the purchase by consumers. The supply chain planning and stock levels of those
critical items after day-zero is also difficult due to the lockdown restrictions.
5 Supply Chain Adoption During COVID-19 Lockdown: Global … 59

5.2.2 Panic Buying Behavior of Consumers

The clear picture in the starting phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has disclosed
the unexpected demand created on the food items and medicines rather than other
consumable items due to the panic buying behavior of the consumers (Mukandwal
2020). Because those items are vital to lead the day-to-day life by the consumers.
If any shortage in these items may lead to increase in the cost of buying and also it
cannot fulfill the real needy people. In another aspect, non-practicing of the social
distancing between the consumers during shopping due to their panic buying behavior
and movement restrictions by the government will lead to the chance of COVID-19
infection among consumers.

5.2.3 Failure in the Policy of Retailers

Usually, most of the retailers and distributors are not interested to invest huge amount
of money in the form of stocks even though those items are very essential to the
consumers, like food and medicines (Mussell et al. 2020). Nowadays, they are
following just-in-time concept for getting delivery from the suppliers. This will not
be applicable for pandemic situations, since the quantity of purchase is very small in
numbers. Further, the supply chain restriction due to lockdown may even affect the
routine supply of these items. Hence, the retailers and distributors may opt the suit-
able policies to procure these essential items during this kind of pandemic scenario.
Accordingly, they should make the suitable contract with the suppliers to face the
unexpected demand. In addition, the ration strategies may be adopted by the retailers
for the selling of essential products to their regular customers.

5.2.4 Pressure on Retailing Sectors

Globally, it is identified that the major consumption of food is being from the restau-
rants, hotels, bars, and cafes. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown restrictions,
most of the people are working from home and they are preparing their own foods
at home. They are depending on the retailing sectors for the purchase of food ingre-
dients. It will create the unintended pressure on the retailing sectors, so as to satisfy
the regular and as well as the new consumers.
60 L. Nagarajan et al.

5.2.5 Income of the Consumers

The economy all around the world is falling down due to the lockdown restrictions
on the businesses and the inoperation of private and government sectors. Consid-
erable number of employees of private concerns are laid off from their work and
few concerns have cut-off their employee’s salary. This sudden fall in consumer’s
income creates an impact on the demand pattern of the essential food items and
medicines. Probably, these type of consumers prefer the low-cost products, instead of
buying expensive products with good quality. This phenomenon is directly affecting
the procurement of food and medicines by the retailers from the suppliers and the
subsequent supply chains also.

5.2.6 Safe Trading

Safe trading is one of the immediate requirement by the consumers rather than
product’s cost. COVID-19 pandemic has created an awareness to the consumers
for giving priority to the safety and health aspects rather than the cost and conve-
nience (Brace 2020). In this pandemic situation, the consumers are very keen to
buy the products from the particular companies that are taking valid steps to ensure
the control in the spread of COVID-19 virus within their span of operations, and
further extent. Hence, all the companies must ensure safe trading of products to the
consumers by distributing with minimal touchpoints.

5.3 Issues on Supply Side

The possible issues on the supply-side include procurement of raw materials, product
and stock management, labor shortages, and disruptions to transportation (Larue
2020). These issues are critically analyzed and presented in this section.

5.3.1 Criticality in the Raw Material Procurement

The assessing of availability of raw material for making the products based on the key
terms like high-demand products, high-value products, and profitable products by
the retailers is very significant. The capacity of the supplier of raw materials and the
instability in the price of raw materials are also equally important factors. Further, the
industries are reviewing the agreements made with the suppliers regarding permit-
table variations in the quantity of supply and the cost. In addition, the review of
emergency plans is also required to emphasize the potential risks associated with it.
5 Supply Chain Adoption During COVID-19 Lockdown: Global … 61

The outcomes of these reviews will be useful to identify the alternate plans for the
addressing the criticality in the raw material procurement and the associated cost of
supply chains.

5.3.2 Lack of Support from the Supplier

Identification of right suppliers is the foremost task of the consumer-oriented organi-

zations based on the key factors, like ability of the supplier in terms of right quantity at
right time, quality of the supply materials, cost of the supply materials, etc. This kind
of assessment may provide the level of support offered by the suppliers in pandemic
situation. If there is a lack in support from the supplier, it is not possible to supply
the essential food and medicine items to the consumers on time.

5.3.3 Labor Shortages

The movement restrictions of people/labors imposed by the government due to this

pandemic situation and the mentality of labor about self-isolation to prevent them
from COVID-19 infection are the key factors of labor shortages. The production rate
of all the food processing industries and pharmaceutical industries are mainly depen-
dent on the work of labors. Further, the distribution of these items through supply
chains is also dependent on the size of the labors who are really working on it. Hence,
this labor shortage created a strong impact on supply side to the retailers/distributors.

5.3.4 Product’s Management

Few retailers may have the capability to arrange their own supply chains even during
the lockdown restrictions, by moving the customized products mix from the supplier’s
place. In this circumstance, the supplier should identify the sharing of raw materials
to manufacture those products mix, facilities to manufacture, etc. The retailers should
make an emergency plans along with their suppliers in view of managing the product
portfolio to satisfy the need of the consumers on time.

5.3.5 Stock Management

Managing the stock levels, reorder levels, and economic order quantity of essential
food and medicine items are somewhat difficult to the retailers due to the drastic
variation in the purchasing pattern of the consumers (Razdan 2020). This variation
62 L. Nagarajan et al.

in the purchasing pattern is because of the consumer’s panic buying behavior with
respect to their intuition on the stock-outs. In the other aspect, the support from the
supplier side is also equally important in the stock management. Retailers must know
the ability of the suppliers and their production schedules, supply chains, etc.

5.3.6 Restriction on Supply Chain

The lockdown restriction on the supply chains between the districts, states, and coun-
tries imposed by the authorities is the crucial factor for the timely supply of food and
medicines to the consumers. Retailers should assess the feasible locations of delivery
centers and distributors to compute risks by geography. Analysis on warehouse loca-
tions and their capacity are the key factors in fixing the supply locations. The proper
export plans and schedules and the associated risks with the destinations are essential
parameters to ensure the better flow of products under constrained supply chain. The
partnership business is also one of the good remedy in these circumstances (Cao and
Zhang 2011).

5.3.7 Financial Position of Consumer Companies

A careful examination of their financial position by the consumer companies is

required to decide the buying capability, stock management, cash flow, etc. They
have to meet out the excess expenses toward the variation in the cost of procurement
of materials due to sudden rise in demand, restricted supply chains, etc. Further, the
inability of the consumers based on their buying capability because of the drastic
changes in the price of the products play another important role which affects the
cash flow of the consumer companies. Hence, the multiple-scenario analysis by the
consumer companies are required to know their financial position to meet out the
pandemic situations and further action for financial alternatives.

5.4 Supply Chain Adoption

Most of the manufacturing industries are facing two kinds of issues during this
COVID-19 pandemic. The first one is that the lack in the quantity of production
due to labor shortages and the second thing is that the supply chain disruptions due
to the lockdown restrictions by the government authorities. As a remedial action
for the first issue, many of the manufacturing industries are presently looking to
robotics technology/automation to supplement locked down labors, reinforce health
and security measures, and rescue their production operations.
5 Supply Chain Adoption During COVID-19 Lockdown: Global … 63

In view of avoiding the issues in supply chains of food and medicines, globally,
the manufacturing industries start preferring the local suppliers for raw material
procurement rather than the usual contract suppliers. In the similar way, marketing
of the manufactured products is taken care by the local retailers and distributors. Since
the government has not imposed any stringent restriction on the supply of essential
items like food and medicines, the local supply chain is a viable solution for marketing
the products. Further, there is no government restriction to get the essential products
from the manufacturing industry by the retailer/distributors. Simultaneously, the
government of different countries has allowed few distributors to do the online sale
of food and medicine products by ensuring the contactless delivery to the consumers,
especially in the urban areas. This exemption by the government is very ease for the
consumers to procure the essential items without any panic of COVID-19 infection.
In addition, this is the time for the farmers to sell their products directly to the
consumers within the local region rather than selling to the distributors. Approx-
imately 30–40% of the consumer needs are fulfilled through this method of local
supply. From this method of supply, the farmers are also benefitted by gaining the
direct profit without any distributing commission. These viable methods ensure the
self-adoption of supply chain during this COVID-19 lockdown. This self-adoption
of supply chain provides the opportunity for the consumers to procure the essential
items, and it will contribute to a major percentage to sustain the economy of the
world during this lockdown period.

5.5 Conclusion

The world is facing numerous disruptions in the supply chains of essential food and
medicine items during this COVID-19 pandemic. The usual just-in-time concept for
getting supply on the right time by the manufacturers/retailers/distributors/consumers
is not a suitable solution during this pandemic time, since the governments all around
the world imposed lockdown restriction. The flexible procurement strategies rather
than the fixed strategies are the suitable solution for all. The issues on supply chains
related with demand and supply-sides are elaborately discussed as a main content in
this chapter. Further, the effective ways to overcome these issues by the supply chains
are discussed under the title of supply chain adoption. The local food supply chain,
online products delivery sector, and direct supply of agricultural/food products by
the farmers are the good instances for supply chain adoption. This self-adoption of
supply chain ensures the supply of essential products to the consumers without any
shortfall and also helps sustain the economy of the world.
64 L. Nagarajan et al.

References

Brace, R. (2020). Supporting suppliers through the Covid-19 pandemic. EuroFinance. https://
www.eurofinance.com/news/supporting-suppliers-through-the-covid-19-pandemic/. Accessed
30 March 2020.
Cao, M., & Zhang, Q. (2011). Supply chain collaboration: Impact on collaborative advantage and
firm performance. Journal of operations Management, 29(3), 163–180.
Hobbs, J. E. (2020). Food supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian Journal of
Agricultural Economics/Revue Canadienne d’Agroeconomie.
Larue, B. (2020). Labour issues and COVID-19. Canadian Journal of Agricultural
Economics/Revue Canadienne d’Agroeconomie.
Mukandwal, P. (2020). Supply chain and pandemics. USA. https://www.mtu.edu/unscripted/stories/
2020/april/supply-chains-and-pandemics.html. Accessed 22 April 2020.
Mussell, A., Bilyea, T., & Hedley, D. (2020). Agri-food supply chains and Covid-19: Balancing
resilience and vulnerability. Agri-Food Economic Systems.
Razdan, H. (2020). Ramping up the supply chain post Covid-19. KPMG in India. https://home.
kpmg/in/en/home/insights/2020/05/ramping-up-the-supply-chain-post-covid-19.html. Accessed
27 May 2020.
Seric, A., Gorg, H., Mosle, S., & Windisch, M. (2020). Managing COVID-19: How the pandemic
disrupts global value chains. UNIDO. https://iap.unido.org/articles/managing-covid-19-how-pan
demic-disrupts-global-value-chains. Accessed 28 April 2020.
Chapter 6
Design and Development of Decision
Support System for Emergency Need
Relief Distribution

V. Kamala and K. Lakshmi

Abstract This study focuses on the design and development of a Decision Support
System (DSS) using DEMATEL and TOPSIS which helps decision-maker in the
humanitarian relief chain, to release funds to a disaster victim by considering their
economic status. The knowledge base of the proposed DSS consists of a range of
economic indicators such as Per capita income of the family, stock available in INR,
a number of dependent family members and Asset owned define the ranking of
community resident’s economic status. DEMATEL is used to find the weightage of
Emergence need assessment parameter such as Per capita income of the family, stock
available in INR, number of dependent family members and Asset owned. TOPSIS
is used to rank disaster victims. The Proposed DSS helps decision-maker involved
in relief services, to provide transparent decision effectively. The real world data is
used to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed approach. This procedure is based on
expert knowledge, rules of thumb and population behaviour. Therefore, this study
develops a practical decision support system considering disaster victims financial
criteria and MCDM is used to rank the victim which help with the relief distribution
in the humanitarian supply chain.

Keywords Relief distribution. FIS, DSS · Economic indicators · Decision making

6.1 Introduction

Disasters may be sudden or slow-onset. A disaster is an event that occurs instanta-

neously and the effects of disasters have intensified economically, socially and envi-
ronmentally for the past few decades (Kaur and Singh 2019). Disruptions caused
by disaster may be short or long-term disruptions and increasing propagation in the
economic conditions of disaster victims (Ivanov 2020). When compared to the last
few years the occurrence of natural disasters along with the disaster victims has
significantly increased by The International Disaster Database (2012). In order to

V. Kamala (B) · K. Lakshmi

College of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, Anna University, Chennai 600
025, Tamil Nadu, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 65

A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_6
66 V. Kamala and K. Lakshmi

reduce the effects of the disaster, the fulfillment of disaster management before and
after the occurrence of a disaster is required. (Galindo and Batta 2013).
As compared with pre-disaster functions, the need for social service professionals
immediately after a disaster is significantly increased. The two important emanate
after a disaster is confirming the continuity of services and addressing unmet needs
(HHS 2014).
COVID-19 is a pandemic that affected more than 3 million people, and about
9,50,449 individuals lost their lives up to August 2020. Every day the rate of infected
people and death rates change. the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting many countries
across the world and not only affecting the health crisis alone but also bump millions
of families back into poverty. have had a There is a significant impact on global supply
chains due to COVID-19 Quarantine condition. It is important to provide disaster
relief services in compliance with humanitarian relief chain principles to disaster
victims (Javaid et al. 2020). The proper flows of relief items must be provided after a
disaster in the humanitarian relief chain. We propose a Decision support system for
post-disaster phases.
The relief distribution to the victims is one of the challenging problem in the
humanitarian supply chain (Sheu 2007). The failure in relief distribution planning
will results in failure in the continuity of services and addressing unmet needs people.
If disaster victims have a shortage of survival needs, leads to a calamity. The inte-
gration of Information, human resource management and technology utilisation of a
few approaches and results will help to decrease the affected people. Therefore, an
effective way to manage the humanitarian relief chain is to rank the disaster victims
who are in survival needs according to the emergency need assessment parameter.
The main purpose of this study is to design a decision support system in order to
rank the disaster victims for the management of relief distribution in the humanitarian
relief supply chain. Figure 6.1 shows the structure under the study of emergency need
assessment of the humanitarian relief supply chain.

6.2 Background

In this section, the studies undertaken in the distribution framework in Humanitarian

supply chain management and application of DSS have been discussed.
In recent decades Humanitarian relief distribution has received increased atten-
tion. Sheu et al. (2007) proposed a three-layer emergency logistics co-distribution
conceptual framework that involves disaster-affected area grouping and relief co-
distribution. The application of framework is conducted in earthquake disasters in
Taiwan. To evaluate the emergency preparedness and responsibility performances
of non-governmental humanitarian relief organisations (NGOs), a hybrid approach,
that consists of interval type-2 fuzzy sets, AHP and PROMETHEE are proposed by
Celik and Gumus (2016). The study is conducted in Turkey to determine the crit-
ical success factors (CSFs) of humanitarian relief logistics management operations.
6 Design and Development of Decision Support System … 67

Decision Support system

Donors
Govt Donors,
Consumers NGOs
Public &organizaƟon
Privtae organizaƟon

Fig. 6.1 Humanitarian supply chain under study

AHP is used to determine the weightage CSF and PROMETHEE is used to eval-
uate the preparedness and response abilities of NGOs. Li et al. (2018) developed
a maximal cooperative covering model by incorporating the severity of disasters
that affect the region, financial efficiency. Maghfiro and Hanaoka (2020) presented
a three-level relief distribution model and the location of logistics operational areas,
modes of transport utilised, and amount of relief goods allocated for each mode
of transport are determined in this model. The factors considered in this study are
network, accessibility of supplies, infrastructure conditions and modes of transport.
The application of the model is examined using the Yogyakarta Earthquake of 2006
in Indonesia. Similarly, many studies focused on designing the distribution network
in the emergency situation (Li et al. 2018; Sahebjamnia et al. 2017).
Govindan et al. (2020) developed a decision support system based on a Fuzzy
inference system (FIS) which is used to classify members with the goal to alle-
viate the pandemic outbreaks for healthcare supply chain disruption. By considering
the indicators of age and) The individuals are classified based on age, pre-existent
diseases such as high blood pressure, heart problems and diabetes. The proposed
approach was verified using the information from four users. Similarly, a decision
support system (DSS) is used in different humanitarian supply chain decision such
as managing humanitarian relief chains (Sahebjamnia et al. (2017), humanitarian
facility location (Florez et al. 2015), logistics of Humanitarian Aid (Ortuño et al.
2010), evacuation location assessment (Hadiguna et al. (2014), disaster relief supply
chain (Kumar and Havey 2013).
However, DSS has been developed for a different type of tactical and operational
decision involved in the distribution decision of humanitarian relief chains, in this
study DSS is developed for emergency need assessment by considering economic
68 V. Kamala and K. Lakshmi

INPUT APPLICATION OF APPLICATION OF

DEMATEL TOPSIS

•Emergency •calculate •calclulate the

needs normalised the Normalized and
assesment iniƟal direct weighted
parameter relaƟon normalized
•Expert opinion •Derive the total decision matrix
•Disaster vicƟm relaƟon fuzzy •Derive the
details matrix negaƟve and
•Data Entry For •Defuzzified r+c posiƟve ideal
the DSS and r-c values soluƟon
•calculate the
relaiƟve
closeness index
•Rank the
alternaƟves.

Fig. 6.2 Emergency need assessment—DSS

and welfare parameters to rank the disaster victims for the management of relief
distribution.

6.3 Proposed Approach

A decision support system based on the DEMATEL & TOPSIS model is developed
to prioritise disaster victims in terms of the economic condition which is shown in
Fig. 6.2. The objective of the developed decision support system at assessing the
Emergency need parameters in relief distribution of the humanitarian supply chain.
The Emergency need parameters considered in this study Per capita income of the
family, stock available in INR, number of dependent family members and Asset
owned. DEMATEL is used to find the weightage of parameter and TOPSIS is used
to rank the disaster victims for the management of relief distribution. Figure 6.2
shows the emergency need assessment—DSS.

6.4 Emergency Needs Assessment Using DEMATEL

An emergency need of disaster victims depends on several factors that are either
directly or indirectly related. Hence, assessment of emergency needs based on a single
factor alone may not be justifiable. The DEMATEL method can be used to analyse
the relationship among multiple complex factors (Tzeng et al. 2007). However, the
evaluation criteria in this context may be imperfect or can contain uncertain factors
6 Design and Development of Decision Support System … 69

and so the human judgement about the preferences can be difficult to estimate by
exact numerical values.
The fuzzy DEMATEL method can help to overcome this and has been used by
several researchers. We use the fuzzy DEMATEL method to estimate the criteria
weights. The relationship between the factors considered is evaluated based on the
opinions of experts using a fuzzy scale. To demonstrate the application of DEMATEL
TOPSIS in DSS Numerical calculation is shown below. The fuzzy scale mapping the
degree of influence with the linguistic terms is shown in Table 6.1.
The following steps are involved in the fuzzy DEMATEL approach (Visalakshmi
et al. 2015).
Step 1: Obtain a n × n fuzzy direct-relation matrix à from the experts, based
 pairwise comparisons of the criteria is shown in Table 6.2. Its elements ãi j =
on
li j , m i j , u i j represent the degree to which criterion j is affected by criterion i.
Step 2: Determine the normalised fuzzy direct-relation matrix X̃ using Eq. (6.1) is
shown in Table 6.3.

X̃ = s × Ã (6.1)

Table 6.1 Linguistic terms for fuzzy DEMATEL evaluation

Abbreviation Fuzzy scales Linguistic term
N (0,0,1) None
VL (0,0.1,0.2) Very low
L (0.1,0.2,0.3) Low
FL (0.2,0.3,0.4) Fairly low
ML (0.3,0.4,0.5) More or less low
M (0.4,0.5,0.6) Medium
MG (0.5,0.6,0.7) More or less good
FG (0.6,0.7,0.8) Fairly good
G (0.7,0.8,0.9) Good
VG (0.8,0.9,1) Very good
E (0.9,1,1) Excellent

Table 6.2 Fuzzy direct-relation matrix Ã

P1 P2 P3 P5
P1 (0,0,0) (0.6,0.7.0.8) (0.1,0.2,0.3) (0.4,0.5,0.6)
P2 (0.6,0.7,0.8) (0,0,0) (0.5,0.6,0.7) (0.2,0.3,0.4)
P3 (0.1,0.2,0.3) (0.5,0.6,0.7) (0,0,0) (0.7,0.8,0.9)
P4 (0.4,0.5,0.6) (0.2,0.3,0.4) (0.7,0.8,0.9) (0,0,0)
 70

Table 6.3 Fuzzy direct-relation matrix (Normalised) X̃

P1 P2 P3 P5
P1 (0,0,0) (0.315,0.3684,0.4211) (0.0526.0.1053.0.1579) (0.2105.0.2632.0.3158)
P2 (0.315,0.3684,0.4211) (0,0,0) (0.2632,0.3158,0.3684) (0.1053,0.1579,0.2105)
P3 (0.0526,0.1053,0.1579) (0.2632,0.3158,0.3684) (0,0,0) (0.3684,0.4211,0.4737)
P4 (0.2105,0.2632.0.3158) (0.1053,0.1579,0.2105) (0.3684,0.4211,0.4737) (0,0,0)
V. Kamala and K. Lakshmi
6 Design and Development of Decision Support System … 71

1
s=

n
max1≤i≤n ui j
j =1

 
Step 3: Define three crisp matrices based on X̃ , where x̃i j = li j , m i j , u i j .
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
0 l12 · · · l1n 0 m 12 · · · m 1n 0 u 12 · · · u 1n
⎢l l2n ⎥ ⎢m ⎥ ⎢u 0 · · · u 2n ⎥
⎢ 21 0 · · · ⎥ ⎢ 21 0 · · · m 2n ⎥ ⎢ 21 ⎥
Xl = ⎢
⎢ .. .. ⎥
⎥, Xm = ⎢
⎢ .. . ⎥, Xu = ⎢
⎢ .. .. ⎥
⎣ . . ⎦ ⎣ . .. ⎥
⎦ ⎣ .
⎥
. ⎦
ln1 ln2 · · · 0 m n1 m n2 · · · 0 u n1 u n2 · · · 0

Step 4: Derive the fuzzy total-relation matrix T̃ using Eqs. (6.2) to (6.5)
−1
T̃ = X̃ I − X̃ (6.2)


Matrix li j = X l (I − X l )−1 (6.3)


Matrix m i j = X m (I − X m )−1 (6.4)


Matrix u i j = X u (I − X u )−1 (6.5)
⎡ ⎤
t˜11 t˜12 · · · t˜1n
⎢ t˜21 t˜22 · · · t˜2n ⎥
⎢ ⎥
.. ⎥ where, t˜i j = li j , m i j , u i j and I is the identity matrix.
  
T̃ = ⎢ .
⎣ .. . ⎦
t˜n1 t˜n2 · · · t˜nn
Step 5: Defuzzify T̃ using Eq. (6.6) and Table 6.4 show the total influence matrix
for each set of sub-criteria considered.

1  
  1
F t˜i j = inf t˜iαj + sup t˜iαj dα (6.6)
2 x∈ x∈
0

Table 6.4 Total influence matrix

P1 P2 P3 P5
P1 4.404 5.036 4.951 4.99
P2 5.036 5.183 5.483 5.336
P3 4.951 5.483 5.357 5.63
P4 4.99 5.336 5.63 5.3
72 V. Kamala and K. Lakshmi

Table 6.5 Emergency need parameter weightage

Parameter P1 P2 P3 P4
Weightages 0.2333 0.2532 0.2577 0.2558

Step 6: Compute the row sum (r) and the column sum (c) of the total influence
matrix. r + c gives the degree to which factor i affects or is affected by j. A positive
value of r − c means that factor i affects other factors and vice versa if it is negative
(Chen and Chen 2010).
Step 7: Determine the weights by normalising the r + c values is shown in Table 6.5.

6.5 Application of TOPSIS

The Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is

based on the assumption that any chosen alternative should be closer to the positive
ideal solution and far away from the negative ideal solution. TOPSIS has the following
steps (Chen and Chen 2010).
Step 1: Obtain the decision matrix D for evaluation with elements f i j , based on the
various criteria considered is shown in Table 6.6.
Step 2: Determine the normalised decision matrix (Table 6.7) with elements ri j using
Eq. (6.7).

Table 6.6 Excerpt of Disaster victim details- Decision matrix

S. No. Monthly income Number of dependent Asset owned (INR) Stock available(INR)
family members
1 4552 2 476256 570
2 9618 5 207199 484
3 9000 5 192583 565

Table 6.7 Excerpt normalised decision matrix

S. No. Monthly income Number of dependent Asset owned (INR) Stock available (INR)
family members
1 0.33 0.27 0.86 0.61
2 0.69 0.68 0.37 0.52
3 0.65 0.68 0.35 0.6
6 Design and Development of Decision Support System … 73

Table 6.8 Weighted normalised decision matrix

S. No. Monthly income Number of dependent Asset owned (INR) Stock available (INR)
family members
1 0.073755 0.068877 0.225664 0.157868
2 0.154215 0.173468 0.097088 0.134576
3 0.145275 0.173468 0.09184 0.15528

fi j
r i j =  (6.7)
f i2j
j

Step 3: Calculate the weighted normalised decision matrix which is shown in

Table 6.8 with elements vi j using the weights wi for each criteria using Eq. (6.8)

vi j = wi · ri j (6.8)

Step 4: Find the ideal and negative-ideal solutions using Eqs. (6.9) and (6.10), where
I  is the set of benefit criteria and I  is the set of cost criteria.
   
   
A+ = v1+ , . . . , vn+ = max vi j i ∈ I  , min vi j i ∈ I  (6.9)
j j
   
 −   
− −
A = v1 , . . . , vn =   
min vi j i ∈ I , max vi j i ∈ I 
(6.10)
j j

Step 5: Determine the distance from the positive ideal solution D +j and the distance
from the negative-ideal solution D −j using Eqs. (6.11) and (6.12) for each alternative
j is shown in Table 6.9.

 2
D +j = vi j − vi+ (6.11)
i

 2
D −j = vi j − vi− (6.12)
i

Table 6.9 Ideal solution

S. No. D+ D−
1 0.131959 0.068877
2 0.130669 0.173468
3 0.134147 0.173468
74 V. Kamala and K. Lakshmi

Table 6.10 Relative

S. No. Relative closeness
closeness index
1 0.507239
2 0.502653
3 0.489028

Step 6: Evaluate the relative closeness to the ideal solution for each alternative j and
rank the alternatives is shown in Table 6.10 using Eq. (6.13)

D −j
C ∗j = (6.13)
D +j + D −j

6.6 Design and Development of DSS−Relief Distribution

DSS−Relief Distribution is a web application that was developed using ASP.Net

as a presentation layer and Microsoft SQL Server as a database layer. DSS−Relief
Distribution consist of interface, knowledge base, model and database. The database
consists of decision-makers ratings/opinions and disaster victims’ information. The
knowledge base consists of conceptual characteristics for ranking disaster victims.
The model base includes DEMATEL and TOPSIS approaches used for assessment.
DSS−Relief Distribution performs data organisation, decision structure, compare
and analysis of TOPSIS output and finding the ranks. The outputs of DSS−Relief
Distribution will be the ranking of disaster victims. Figure 6.3 depicts adding,

Fig. 6.3 Details of emergency need assessment parameter

6 Design and Development of Decision Support System … 75

Fig. 6.4 Expert rating

Fig. 6.5 Weightage of emergency needs assessment parameters

editing, deleting and viewing features of the details of emergency needs assessment
parameters.
Figure 6.4 depicts the features of updating experts rating based on the linguistic
term of the fuzzy scale shown in Table 6.1. The result page of DEMATEL which
depicts the weightage of emergency needs assessment parameters is shown in Fig. 6.5.
Adding, editing, and deleting details of disaster victims’ features are shown in
Fig. 6.6. Figure 6.7 depicts the features selecting parameters and disaster victims’
for the TOPSIS model.

6.7 Results and Discussion

Based on DEMATEL and TOPSIS approaches, the relative closeness of each disaster
victims’ is found. Decision-makers will select the disaster victims’ with high relative
closeness value. Figure 6.8 depicts the victims identity number (Aadhaar number) and
their relative closeness and their rank. Based on relative closeness index calculation
76 V. Kamala and K. Lakshmi

Fig. 6.6 Disaster victim details

Fig. 6.7 Application of TOPSIS

6 Design and Development of Decision Support System … 77

Fig. 6.8 Ranking of disaster victims

the emergency need assessment parameter of disaster victim is derived. The ranking
of the victims is calculated using relative closeness index values which are shown in
Fig. 6.8. The relief distribution DSS helps relief services decision-makers to provide
transparent decisions effectively.

6.8 Conclusion

A decision support system was designed to prioritise the disaster victims and, accord-
ingly, manage the relief distribution in the humanitarian supply chain. The disaster
victim is prioritised using emergency need assessment parameters such as per capita
income of the family, stock available in INR, number of dependent family members,
and asset owned. DEMATEL is used to find the weightage of the emergency need
assessment parameter and disaster victims are prioritised using TOPSIS. The devel-
oped DSS was verified using 30 victims data. Since the computational complexity is
more, a computer-generated decision support system has been designed. DSS gener-
ates the ranking of disaster victims. The developed DSS enabled the decision-maker
to make decisions from the view of relief distribution. the DSS can be developed by
adding more evaluation parameters and also evaluated using advanced techniques
in the future. The adapted DSS can be tested in many regions to derive meaningful
insights.
78 V. Kamala and K. Lakshmi

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Chapter 7
Analysis of Barriers for the Build
the Resilient Supply Chain Networks
Post-COVID-19

Krishna Kumar Dadsena, K. Mathiyazhagan, and Atour Taghipour

Abstract Achieving a resilient supply chains network has become a matter of

common interest to current supply chain practitioners. A stable, efficient, and resilient
supply chain network has the power to change the economical as well as political
scenario of any country. Building resilience supply chain networks are often based
on the popular discussion as situations where accuracy in decision making helps
to improve the operations and to bring back the social activity to normal condition
after the pandemic. Hence, a resilient supply chain network affords the probable
solutions to handle the associated issues in the network. This study identified and
prioritize the barriers in building a resilient supply chain network in India. This
research has focused on the situations where supply chain managers are facing
challenge’s in handling and mitigating different risks by adopting the most suitable
strategies. Hence, this challenge has drawn the attention of the current supply chain
pre-tensioners to bounce back their organisation from any disruption. In this study,
we attempt to provide the impact of COVID-19 on socioeconomic systems and opin-
ions of supply chain managers and provide the recommendations to recover from the
current COVID-19 situation and to build their supply chain network more resilient
for future challenges. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been adopted for this
study. Base on the literature, survey, discussion with the supply chain managers, we
have identified factors. Subsequently, based on these factors, a questionnaire was
designed and the survey was conducted among supply chain managers. This study
provides strategic decision support to managers by considering the post-COVID-19
issues and their effect on their supply chain network. This study also helps managers
to provide structural thinking to improve the intuition against the similar scenario in
the operational processes that can be envisioned.

K. K. Dadsena
IBS, Shankarapalli Road, Hyderabad 501203, Telangana, India
K. Mathiyazhagan (B)
Operations & Quantitative Method, Thiagarajar School of Management, Madurai 625015,
Tamilnadu, India
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Taghipour
Faculty of International Business, Normandy University, Normandy, France

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 79

A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_7
80 K. K. Dadsena et al.

Keywords Resilient supply chain networks · Barriers · COVID-19 · Analytic

hierarchy process · India

7.1 Introduction

A highly efficient supply chain management is essential to meet the challenges of

globalistion and business competition. Supply chain management is a set of supply
of the materials at the right time with the help of logistic systems so that the material
is produced and distributed with maximising the customer service levels. As the
modern supply chains are complex and extended beyond the geographical barriers,
they are vulnerable to diverse factors which affect the SCN. Hence, managing the
SCN can be considered as an essential activity of the supply chain management to
reduce the adverse effects of the different barriers in the performance of the supply
chain.
Nowadays, most of the supply chain practitioners are inclined to analyse the
barriers to manage their business against increasing uncertain issues such as natural
disasters, manmade disasters, competition, customer’s expectancy levels and change-
able situations. Supply chain (SC) can fail in several ways whose impact depends
upon the type of event that occurs, in the supply chain network (SCN) such as logis-
tics network (inbound and outbound network) or sourcing environment (Bode and
Macdonald 2017). As the impacts of COVID-19 are being felt by the practitioners day
by day, despite efforts by the individual, government to control its effects, which is
triggering the loss of human life and business across the global market. The COVID-
19 pandemic is an interruption in almost every activity of a business, which affects the
supply chains network adversely. “Nearly 75 percent of companies testified supply
chain interruption due to COVID-19 pandemic and it is expected that this figure will
rise over the time in future” according to Institute For Supply Chain Management
(Sengupta 2020). Therefore, understanding the impacts of COVID-19 in the SCN
has become an important challenge to make the network more resilient in the future.
An efficient and resilient SC is the demand of the time to sustain in the global
dynamic market economy as well as social growth of the country. A scientific and
systematic approach is required to first analyse the barriers in building the SC resilient
against a negative event. The current SC practitioners’ emphasis more on the need for
a structured understanding and analysing their network for goal setting, allocation and
prioritisation of resources to supports the managers in either approving or changing
current policy considering the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic making supply chain resilience has become
one of the main subjects for SC practitioners, consultancies, insurance companies,
government agencies and international organisations. Hence, to sustain against this
pandemic which leads to barriers in the SC management process. Ali et al. (2017)
advocated the need for analysing the barriers in SC management and considered
it as an integral part of the risk management process. This helps in improving the
7 Analysis of Barriers for the Build the Resilient Supply … 81

performance by understanding the uncertain activities and also helps in the devel-
opment of mitigation strategies. Considering the current COVID-19 pandemic there
is still extensive study that needs to be conducted with regards to the selection of
appropriate barriers after the pandemic.

7.2 Literature Review

The term resilience has been discussed in different fields like ecology, metallurgy,
psychology, and management (Ali et al. 2017). In the supply chain perspective, the
context of the supply chain, the most widely accepted and theoretically (Ponomarov
and Holcomb 2009) defined the supply chain resilience as the capability of SCN to
prepare, respond and recover from the unexpected disruption in the operation of SC.
The factors that influence the SCR are such as SC visibility inventory availability,
strategy planning and implementation (Macdonald et al. 2018). Hence, identification
and selection of the barriers in the SCR playas an important role in such situations.
Undoubtedly, the pandemic COVID-19 is an unexpected and extraordinary event
facing the global SC practitioners with a question that continued functioning of
SCN with the current SCN design (Ivanov and Das 2020). Due to the COVID-19
outburst the academicians and practitioners are struggling to manage their SCN in
several perspectives such as there may be loss of opportunities because of improper
communication and lack of proper information about the load for the transporter
(Ivanov 2020). Considering the size of the SCN and the increasing difficulty of
its operations, it becomes important to study and identify the various SCR factors,
prioritize them based on their criticality.
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, an effective and efficient design of the SCN has
become a big challenge for practitioners (Kumar et al. 2020). Authors advocate the
need for a systematic and scientific approach to manage against the current challenges
status and future trend of evolving vulnerabilities in the operational process. Golan
et al. (2020) highlighted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global and local
SCN and emphasizes an advanced resilience analytical approach that can help the
managers in the strategic decision-making process of SCN. Therefore, the accurate,
timely and convincing decision considering the uncertainty in the operations has
become one of the main challenges in such situations. This has motivated us to take
up the challenge of the identification of different barriers in SCN. Thereby, this study
aims to fill this research gap by extending the approach for the selection of barriers
in resilience SCN design post-COVID-19.
Due to complex and uncertain operating environment arises in SCN due to
COVID-19, almost all type of industry is facing several risky situations that might
lead to overall operational failure of their SCN. Sharma et al. (2020) described
that the risks involved in the individual activity of the supply chain contribute to the
complete failure of the whole supply chain network. Golan et al. (2020) recommended
that identification and reduction of operational uncertainty due to the COVID-19
82 K. K. Dadsena et al.

pandemic helps the SCN to improve its resilience against a similar situation in near
future.
Considering the intense situation like COVID-19 the multi-criteria decision-
making approach has been proven its effectiveness in decision making Sharma et al.
(2020). Also, recent articles by authors, Albahri et al. (2020), Belhadi et al. (2020),
Yang et al. (2020) emphasises the use of a multi-criteria decision-making approach to
help management in decision making in a pandemic situation. The study by Mahato
et al. (2020) and Pamungkas et al. (2020) has been effectively applied the AHP in
decision making under the pandemic situation.

7.3 Solution Methodology

AHP methodology has been adopted as a solution tool for this study shown in Fig. 7.1.
It helps in decomposing, organising, and analysing a complicated decision-making
problem by considering different criteria and sub-criteria (Luthra et al. 2016). This
approach converts the problem into a hierarchical structure category in different
levels, such as main objective or goal, criteria, and sub-criteria (Govindan 2015;
Mangla et al. 2015). Therefore, AHP is recommended as a better tool compares to
others due to its extensive applicability and user-friendly nature (Harputlugil et al.
2011). Thus, in this study, we have used the AHP approach to evaluate barriers in
resilience SCN for Post COVID-19 situations (Tables 7.1 and 7.2).

Recognition of post COVID 19 SCN barriers using literature and expert inputs

Data collection

Finalization of the barriers through

expert inputs

Evaluation of the barriers

through AHP approach

Managerial implications

Fig. 7.1 Steps of the proposed research

7 Analysis of Barriers for the Build the Resilient Supply … 83

Table 7.1 The resilient supply chain networks post COVID-19 criteria
Main criteria Sub-criteria Description Source
Manufacturing (D1) The traditional Industries will have to Pearce (2020), Mandal
centralised reduce risk against (2020)
manufacturing model dependencies on
(D11) centralized
manufacturing
Intelligent and Businesses Ivanov (2020),
responsive allocation practitioners should Sengupta (2020)
across channels pay attention to make
(D12) their SCN more
capable towards the
intelligent and
responsive system to
improve the
effectiveness of their
business
Little understanding Managing Inventory Patrinley et al. (2020),
and flexibility of requires more focus by De Kock (2020)
inventory the planners as they
management system may face the challenge
(D13)
Operational barriers Inability resume About resuming DePhillipo (2020)
(D2) operation quickly operations and getting
(D21) back to the normal
operating state
Deficiency in risk The knowledge and Golan (2020),
identification and collective action to McMaster et al. (2020)
wrong assumptions mitigate the risk can
(D22) help in quick departure
from the disaster
possible
Failure in quick The Supply Chain Baghalian et al. (2013)
operational changes Managers requires a
for challenges (D23) flexible and efficient
SCN through
enhancing the agility
in the operation
Sourcing and Capacity or inventory Examining and McMaster et al. (2020)
Distribution Barriers inflexibilities (D31) improving the capacity
(D3) or inventory
management system
Sudden changes in Managers should Patrinley et al. (2020)
demand (Bullwhips focus on uncertainty
effect) (D32) on supply and demand
(continued)
84 K. K. Dadsena et al.

Table 7.1 (continued)

Main criteria Sub-criteria Description Source
Need for direct The change in Baghalian et al. (2013)
distribution (D33) distribution design
may help to make
SCN resilient
Human and Complying with Pandemic sharpens the Sharma et al. (2020)
judgmental barriers service level managers thinking
(D4) agreements (D41) about strengthening
the service quality
Lack of experience in In aiming for SCN McMaster et al. (2020)
dealing with such resilient managers
risks (D42) need to identify and
manage the negative
events effectively
Lack of expanding The resilient SCN Pan and Zhang (2020)
the individual needs individuals to
responsibility (D43) response

Table 7.2 Numerical ratings

Scale Meaning (A factor compared to B)
in the AHP method
1 Equal importance
3 Moderate importance
5 Strong importance
7 Very strong or demonstrated importance
9 Extreme importance
2, 4, 6, 8 Intermediate values
Reciprocals When B is compared with A

7.3.1 Step 1: Hierarchal Framework

See (Fig. 7.2).

7.3.2 Step 2: Develop the Pairwise Comparison Matrix

Pairwise comparison matrix of main criteria

D1 D2 D3 D4
D1 1 0.111 0.142 0.200
D2 9 1 3 5
(continued)
7 Analysis of Barriers for the Build the Resilient Supply … 85

(continued)
D1 D2 D3 D4
D3 7 0.333 1 2
D4 5 0.200 0.500 1
Sum 22 1.644 4.642 8.200

Pair wise comparison for the sub-criteria for Pair wise comparison for the sub-criteria for
Manufacturing criteria Operational barriers
D21 D22 D23 D21 D22 D23
D11 1 0.1428 0.2 D21 1 0.1111 0.25
D12 7 1 3 D22 9 1 3
D13 5 0.3333 1 D23 4 0.3333 1
Sum 13 1.4761 4.2 Sum 14 1.4444 4.25
Pair wise comparison for the sub-criteria for Pair wise comparison for the sub-criteria for
Sourcing and Distribution Barriers Human and judgmental barriers
D31 D32 D33 D41 D42 D43
D31 1 0.1428 0.3333 D41 1 0.1111 0.2
D32 7 1 2 D42 9 1 7
D33 3 0.5 1 D43 5 0.1428 1
Sum 11 1.6428 3.3333 Sum 15 1.2533 8.2

7.3.3 Step 3: Weights of the Main and Sub-Criteria

See (Table 7.3).

7.4 Managerial Implications

This study helps SC practitioners to become more informed and resilient against
barriers in post-COVID-19 pandemics. As it can be seen from Table 7.3 operational
barriers secured the highest weight this is indicative of the fact that the operation
of SC would be challenging for the practitioners. Also, the sub-criteria show that
managers should focus on the systematic and scientific approach to handle the risks
carefully. This result will help the managers to know the factors on which he should
concentrate on the efficient operation of his business. The article also provides the
decision-making information which will enable the manager in implementing the
appropriate strategy to control the situation. This study supports management to
prepare well for the post-COVID-19 pandemic. It is found that specific call to risk
86 K. K. Dadsena et al.

Barriers in Resilient SCN

Main Criteria
Sourcing and Human and
Manufacturing Operational judgmental
Distribution
(D1) barriers (D2) barriers (D4)
Barriers (D3)

D11 D21 D31 D41

Sub - Criteria
D12 D22 D32 D42

D13 D23 D33 D43

Fig. 7.2 Main criteria and sub-criteria

Table 7.3 Weights of the main and sub-criteria

Main Criteria Criteria Weight Sub-criteria Criteria Weight Global Weight
Manufacturing (D1) 0.0420 D11 0.0737 0.0031
D12 0.6433 0.0270
D13 0.28283 0.01189
Operational barriers (D2) 0.5682 D21 0.0690 0.0392
D22 0.6803 0.3866
D23 0.2505 0.1424
Sourcing and distribution 0.2450 D31 0.0926 0.0226
barriers (D3) D32 0.6150 0.1507
D33 0.2923 0.0716
Human and judgmental 0.1446 D41 0.0598 0.0086
barriers (D4) D42 0.7503 0.1085
D43 0.1897 0.0274
7 Analysis of Barriers for the Build the Resilient Supply … 87

managers to recognize and adopt responsive action throughout the channel to reduce
risk by avoiding the wrong assumption and improve their risk management process.

7.5 Conclusion

To sustain in the rapidly growing competitive global market, due to COVID-19

pandemic, SC practitioners need to identify the barriers and its management. Which
helps the organisation to take a better-informed decision with an improved proba-
bility of achieving its strategic and operational objectives. This study presents the
barriers in the SCN design to sustain post-COVID-19 situations, as the complexity
and uncertainty involved in the operational process became a big challenge to the
SC managers. AHP has been proven as an effective and most widely used decision-
making tool to provide the weightage for the different criteria based on their relative
importance.
This work identified and evaluated the barriers associated with the post-COVID-
19 pandemic in the SCN. Initially, four main categories of barriers and twelve sub-
criteria related to post-pandemic have been identified from the trade journal, maga-
zine, literature. Then, AHP has been used to evaluate and rank these barriers by
calculating the weightage of the criteria. The use of the proposed approach directly
influences the managers to take an operational decision in the performance improve-
ment of the industry. SCN encompasses different attributes, the proposed approach
provides an aggregated opinion of the different stakeholders to reach a common
conclusion in finding the barriers and their mitigation strategy.
In the future, this study can be extended in many directions. In future research,
fuzzy AHP may be used to eliminate ambiguity and uncertainty. Also, the develop-
ment and selection of strategy considering economic constraint for the SC manager
will be one of the very interesting future works.

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Chapter 8
Action Plans for Logistics and Supply
Chain Recovery Post-COVID-19

Deepak Mathivathanan and K. Sivakumar

Abstract The unprecedented humanitarian crisis caused due to the COVID-19

breakout has irrevocably changed the global economic landscape and has posed
huge challenges to business owners around the globe. Global supply chains are
further affected due to the government policies on travel restrictions, quarantines and
suspending business operations intended to prevent the further spread of the virus.
The evolution of various supply chain strategies over the years focused on supply
chain optimization to minimize costs, inventories and increase effective utilization
of resources has forced firms to go for minimized buffers and capability to absorb
vast scale disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Significant logistics and
supply chain challenges will remain for an indeterminate period of time as pandemic
impacts still continue to peak in developing countries. Further, with the world entering
a new normal post-COVID-19, drastic changes in overall spending and consumer
behaviour are. Though many businesses are adapting crisis-management mecha-
nisms their focus is typically on the short term. However, logistics and supply chain
planners hope to plan the medium and long term to build resilience to see them
through the other side. Hence, this chapter focuses on the set of issues that require
immediate attention across the entire supply chains amidst the ongoing pandemic
and further we discuss the action plans to mitigate the pandemic effect and to recover
by building resilience against such future shocks.

Keywords COVID-19 pandemic · Digital supply chain · Recovery · Action plan ·

Resilience

D. Mathivathanan (B)
Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Loyola Institute of Business Administration,
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
e-mail: [email protected]
K. Sivakumar
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Siddharth Institute of Engineering and Technology
(SIETK), Puttur 517583, Andhra Pradesh, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 91

A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_8
92 D. Mathivathanan and K. Sivakumar

8.1 Introduction

The COVID-19 disease which began, has a health scare, in Wuhan, China has trans-
formed into a global pandemic spread across more than 200 countries and already
disrupted the global economic landscape irrevocably. Governments across the globe
declaring either partial or complete lockdown measures as a strategy to control the
spread of COVID-19 has led to massive disruptions to international trade and global
supply chains. As a result, global GDP has taken a serious hit, much faster and worse
than the economic crisis of 2008. With automotive, textiles, aviation, tourism and
electronics sectors being worst hit by the pandemic (Chamola et al. 2020) the sectors
are focusing on a quick rebound, the resumption of business as usual is yet far away
in time.
Severe disruptions in inbound and outbound logistics like air cargo shipments,
trucking and rail cargo services, heavy port congestions are witnessed because of
the coronavirus crisis (Linton and Vakil 2020). Further, the regional lockdowns have
impeded logistics operations causing unusual delays in shipments. Suddenly, the
businesses realized their supply chains were no more resilient and consumers who
were used to abundance found themselves with scarcity issues even in their daily
basic needs (Ivanov and Das 2020). Post-COVID-19 the logistics and supply chain
management will not be the same as normal. Businesses will have to undergo signif-
icant transitions in the way they operate to adjust to the new normal. Adjusting to the
new demand scenarios, transportation options, efficient warehousing & operations
and building resilience in the logistics and supply chain networks are the key issues
to be addressed. The pre-COVID supply chains must build resilience by going for
multiple suppliers and diversified manufacturers. The supply chain priorities must be
re-assessed based on the current realities and the associated warehousing and logis-
tics might have to be re-configured to be more flexible and yet cost-effective. Supply
chain innovations both technological and operational along the entire value chain
will be the way to move forward post-COVID-19. Thus, the impact of coronavirus
has been significant on logistics and supply chain management around the globe and
in future the supply chain planners and professionals must focus on supply chain
transparency and continuous monitoring.
Several businesses worldwide have mobilized and initiated rapid crisis manage-
ment to ensure their business continuity in the short-term. But, to achieve logistics
and supply chain resilience medium- and long-term planning is required to recover
from the impact created by the COVID-19 outbreak. Examining closely, the need for
a resilient supply chain and logistics network through innovative recovery approaches
is the need of the hour (Blackhurst et al. 2011; Hosseini et al. 2019; Remko 2020;
Singh et al. 2020). Planning for supply chain recovery involves keeping the logistics
system agile to ensuring continuous ship movements, keeping the ports open for
international trade flows and importantly not compromising on ensuring the safety
measures to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus (UNCTAD 2020).
8 Action Plans for Logistics and Supply Chain Recovery … 93

The logistics and supply chain recovery process requires a complete reassessment
of the existing infrastructures in terms of location, production capabilities, capac-
ities, management of information flows, material flows to effectively reconfigure
the existing structure. Integration and collaboration among partners will be crucial
to establish common goals and share not only the future gains but also the losses
incurred. Knowledge management and data gathering within supply chain members
will play important role in identifying and understanding bottlenecks to provide
innovative solutions. After addressing the disruptions, logistics and supply chain
managers should work on ensuring trust and transparency across the supply chain.
Critical supply chains such as pharma and food supply chains would require the
most attention from policymakers and government in general aftermath of COVID-
19. Consumption patterns of customers and changes in consumer behaviours are
witnessed along with the increased usage of social media and chatting apps used for
sharing items. Sustainable consumption, buying local and ethical consumer goods
are increasing along with the use of service provider apps. Hence, studies on logistic
and supply chain recovery post-COVID-19 have gained paramount interest with both
academicians and industrial experts. This chapter intends to address this need for the
possible action plans for post-COVID-19 logistics and supply chain recovery in two
main exclusive themes, that is, logistics recovery and supply chain recovery.

8.2 Logistics Recovery Post-COVID-19

The logistics industry has always been the key element of global trade and economy
by ensuring just-in-time delivery to reduce inventory cost, driving global market
penetration, enabling accurate and consistent demand forecasting and associated
planning, delivering low-cost sourcing and eventually increasing customer satisfac-
tion by speeding the deliveries. More importantly, the quarantine policy has led to
the supply decrease of drivers and trucks (Cai and Luo 2020). But, as a part of
reducing the international spread of the COVID-19 virus, policymakers from most
countries need to ensure safer international logistics and transport to keep the trade
going on. Implementing drastic safety measures and controls against COVID-19 and
the need to keep the cross-border trade flowing are of paramount importance. A
decrease in production and lower demand for products barring the essentials have
reduced the shipping volumes across the globe. Many containers firms are at the
brink of bankruptcy and many firms are faced with unforeseen struggles to collect
and analyze data for necessary risk mitigation strategies. With lower production scale
and varying demand scenarios suppliers are unable to forecast effectively creating
a bullwhip effect in distribution trade. Further, with the airline business taking a
serious hit, lack of resources is expected and on the other hand, the increase in
online shopping and panic buying the existing logistics infrastructure prove to be
insufficient.
94 D. Mathivathanan and K. Sivakumar

Though the signs of returning to normalcy are far away in time serious action
plans must be followed to ensure that the logistics industry comes out of this COVID-
19 crisis. A prioritized restoration of supply chains primarily meeting the essential
product demands and gradually bring the demand for other products to normal will
prevent overburdening of at present limited supply system. Creating efficient contin-
gency plans to avoid delays and bottlenecks becomes a key element in tackling
unexpected circumstances. Training the employees on hygiene and social distancing
will reflect in gaining consumer confidence. Taping the technological advancements
in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) to create real-time supply chain
dashboards, Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking is going to be the way to go.
This section summarizes the concrete measures proposed by United Nations to facil-
itate safe transport and trade across the border and eventually protecting people from
contracting the virus.
• Since the maximum of global trade is via commercial shipping it is necessary to
provide services from bunkering to supplies without compromising on the health
regulations and ensure uninterrupted shipping around the clock.
• Keeping the ports open to ships and intermodal connections 24/7 to spread
workloads to protect port personnel and to maintain efficient port operations.
• Speeding up custom clearance and protecting international trade in cases of critical
goods by providing a harmonised system for critical medical supplies to facilitate
accelerated and fast-track clearances.
• Facilitating cross-border air freights for urgent deliveries, enabling trucks, trains
and transport workers to cross borders through pre-processing of clearances and
approving relevant storage facilities are critical.
• Transit countries co-operating and maintaining their access to seaports and other
trade corridors to ensure a steady flow of goods in landlocked countries.
• Governments supporting and assisting industrial associations to share information
and enabling transparency.
• Going for paperless transactions by adopting electronic alternatives to minimize
the risk of COVID-19 transmission via contaminated surfaces can protect the
health of workers.
• Promoting collaborative action plans to counter the legal implications of delays,
performance drop and other related issues need to put into effect wherever
appropriate.
• For the benefit of vulnerable countries providing financial support will ensure
resilience in supply chains and enable them to stay in business.
• Providing tailor-made advisory services, research programs to enable capacity
building, trade and customs automation for all supply chain partners.
8 Action Plans for Logistics and Supply Chain Recovery … 95

8.3 Supply Chain Recovery Post-COVID-19

In comparison to logistics, the supply chain recovery is much complex. Organizations

are required to continuously monitor both short- and long-term demand to manage
inventory and accommodate production losses incurred due to continued factory
shutdowns. Also, on the other hand, retailers face a problem of panic buying which
leaves them with a depleted inventory. Further, customers are now more comfort-
able with home delivery options leaving retailers with the additional burden of
managing increased last-mile delivery cases while also keeping their employees safe.
Creating contingency plans to face the unique risks each company faces becomes
more and more important. Planning for post-COVID, companies should plan for both
optimistic and conservative scenarios because returning to normalcy is uncertain.
Strategies to mitigate supply shocks can be dealt successfully by planning effec-
tively with existing suppliers. Leveraging the aggregated data by third-party part-
ners enables increased visibility of the movement of goods across the network and
enables the organizations to frame effective contingency plans. With limited supplies,
managing demand volatility without compromising on worker safety is of key impor-
tance. Workforces handling food products, or any other last-mile deliveries should
be educated about their and customer safety. Also, checking their health regularly
and providing them with protective equipment will guard them against COVID-19.
Following this outbreak, factories and firms are moving towards reopening their busi-
ness. Though COVID-19 may be an unpredictable black swan event, understanding
one’s own supply chain in terms of its risk, resilience and opportunities can enable
firms to plan better for the crisis.
Post-COVID-19 disruption, manufacturing firms and even retailers will look
beyond the cheapest places for safe and best places to the source, produce and
for storing the products. Planning COVID-19 task forces at executive and opera-
tional levels to address challenges and partnering with suppliers to enable critical
shipments to flow is important. Many factories have opted for dividing their work-
forces into shift-based groups and furthermore, companies have gone to the extent of
harnessing the AI-driven manufacturing alternatives for the existing capacity. In the
case of grocery supplies, sourcing and procurement teams should investigate digital
solutions to switch on to additional sources and readjust to having flexible sources
to need varying demands. Post-COVID-19 stock allocation decisions will more be
taken at the distributor level. In general, the companies which have implemented
supply chain risk management strategies will be able to ensure business continuity.
Multi-sourcing and buffering strategies have come to their rescue. Firms with strong
supplier relationships to leverage visibility across supply chain networks developed
the agility to reconfigure their distribution networks. On the other hand, the firms
reliant on a single supplier strategy and those who do not have end-to-end visibility
failed to understand the current inventory status to ensure the uninterrupted flow
of products. Though, adopting Digital supply network models as shown in Fig. 8.1
could solve the current challenges many short-term actions in line with achieving
long-term goals are needed to respond to current challenges and manage cash flow
and net working capital immediately.
96 D. Mathivathanan and K. Sivakumar

Fig. 8.1 Transforming traditional supply chains to digital supply networks. Adopted from Gaus
et al. (2018)

Creating transparency: Working closely with the production and operations team
will help in identifying the components or services outsourced from high-risk
suppliers and assess the risk of supply interruptions. For cases with the risks of signif-
icantly interrupting the production schedules, alternate suppliers need to be identified
or firms can collaborate with their suppliers to address the risks. Understanding such
specific risks across the supply chain will allow a faster restart post-COVID-19 and
this could be made possible only by creating transparency across the supply chain.
Inventory management: Built-in inventory in supply chains can postpone the impact
of halted production lines and buy time to plan effective recovery strategies. Trans-
parency in supply chains can aid in estimating inventory across the value chains. All
categories namely finished goods, spare parts, parts in transit, supplies with dealers
need to be estimated to ramp up post-COVID-19 recovery.
Optimizing production and distribution capacity: Pandemic crisis like COVID-19
has significantly increased or decreased the demand for different products. Using
statistical forecasting tools and ensuring continuous monitoring of forecasts can
enable companies to optimize their production and distribution capacities accord-
ingly. To ensure employee safety educating them about infection risks and enabling
work at home options can be tailor-made by assessing firm-specific scenarios.
Securing logistics capacity: As discussed in the earlier section, COVID-19 has
disrupted any possible logistics across the globe. Hence, it is critical to priori-
tize the logistics needs and prebook logistics facilities to minimize the potential
8 Action Plans for Logistics and Supply Chain Recovery … 97

cost increases. Collaborating with partners can effectively improve the chances of
securing logistics capacity. Also, changing the mode of transport based on given
scenarios and accelerating customs clearance are other useful aids.
Assess supply chain vulnerability: Finally, the potential drivers of supply chain
vulnerability should be addressed. Firms should look upon addressing issues like,
how predictable is demand planning? how exposed is their network to disruptions?
How resilient is their transportation network? How vulnerable is their product to regu-
latory changes? and how could they mitigate future disruptions? By acting effectively
over the next few months on the above issues, companies can better their chances of
recovering post-COVID-19 as soon as possible.

8.4 Need for Digital Supply Chain Model

for Post-COVID-19 Recovery

Supply chain sophistication has increased exponentially over the recent years and it
has been the major factor in building any firms’ competitive edge. Over the years,
supply chain optimizations to minimize costs and inventories have hindered the flex-
ibility to accommodate disruptions as caused by COVID-19. The traditional supply
chain models and risk management techniques may not absorb global shocks effec-
tively. Fortunately, innovative digital technologies present today can enhance end-
to-end visibility, agility, and responsiveness to mitigate any unforeseen disruptions.
Transformation of the linear supply chain into digital supply networks aligned with
overall business strategy will build a resilient supply chain that not only reduces the
risks of any disruptions but also enable firms to recover faster. With the fourth indus-
trial revolution (Industry 4.0) gaining much attention, technologies such as IoTs,
AI, Cloud computing, Robotics, Cyber-Physical systems, Blockchain technology,
Big Data analysis, Additive manufacturing are worth investing to enable an effective
digital supply network for the future.

8.5 Conclusion

This chapter presented the corresponding actions to be taken in order to maintain

smooth logistics operations and enhance the resilience of the supply chain post the
COVID-19 pandemic. There will be profound changes to the economy and social life
after the pandemic. By supporting supply chain partners and maximizing the usage
of favourable policies implemented within the period, the supply chain operation is
expected to be gradually recovered to some extent. Similarly, ensuring employees’
safety, continued smooth functioning of cross-border transport, protecting the ship-
pers and transport service providers and speed up customs clearance and trade facili-
tation during the pandemic can improve the delivery of essential goods to the affected
98 D. Mathivathanan and K. Sivakumar

zone. With the implementation of these measures in many industries and logistics
sectors globally, the average recovery rate of logistics and supply chain for industrial
enterprises above designated size. Implementing the suggested measures post the
pandemic will assist the managers in the ease of logistic trade and resilience of the
supply chain. The action plans considered in this chapter are generic, and thus, they
can be used to extend the study with insertion or elimination of a few more measures.
Furthermore, this chapter is a useful source to build the resilience supply chain and
logistics to cope with any other pandemic outbreak by any organization.

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countermeasures from supply chain perspective. Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University
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Chapter 9
Need for Embracing New Digital
Technologies in Healthcare Supply Chain

Manavalan Ethirajan and Jayakrishna Kandasamy

Abstract The supply chain has become even more important in the prevailing crisis
like COVID-19 as the impact is seen worldwide. Any disruption in the supply chain
affects the entire economy and the COVID-19 pandemic has proven it one more time
especially for the healthcare sector. In the current pandemic situation, the customers
(patients) need to vary much due to the diversified requirements of the patient. Thus,
the study on digital technologies in healthcare is essential to bring more value the
organisations. This study intends to contribute to the health care supply chain to
assess the new technologies. Based on the review, a framework for the healthcare
supply chain is developed and the key criteria are analysed using Quality Function
Deployment (QFD) based approach. The conceptual framework is designed based
on three enablers namely inventory, organisation, and customer service in the health-
care supply chain. Based on the analysis, new technologies to fulfill the gap in the
present system are proposed. It is encouraging to see the management is ready to
deploy technology as the inputs are based on the voice of different stakeholders.
This pandemic has shown that the health care supply chain needs to embrace new
technologies such as Big Data, Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of
Things to improve overall supply chain efficiency.

Keywords Health care supply chain · Digital technologies · QFD · COVID-19

9.1 Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities in the current healthcare

supply chain (Govindan et al. 2020). As healthcare has strived to maintain required
inventory in terms of Masks, Personal Protective Equipment, Ventilators, and drugs
(Nikolopoulos et al. 2020). Healthcare management has shifted its focus on supply
chain optimisation now and prioritising technology-based initiatives to fight against
Covid-19 (Leite et al. 2020).

M. Ethirajan · J. Kandasamy (B)

School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore 632014, Tamil Nadu,
India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 99

A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_9
100 M. Ethirajan and J. Kandasamy

Most of the hospitals are desperate to get the supplies seamlessly and want to
avoid stockout on critical medicines and devices (Singh et al. 2020). Some of the
hospitals have the data but unsure of how to use it to drive decisions. There are
multiple challenges faced by healthcare during this pandemic, some hospitals have
placed multiple orders for the same items mistakenly and are not ready to pay the
supplier. In addition, there are few organisations that struggled to get the minimum
number of healthcare items as some of the suppliers started hoarding supplies of
hand sanitiser, personal protective equipment as they have seen a sudden surge in
demand for these items. Eventually, there is a shortage of these basic healthcare items
to hospitals and frontline workers. Some consumers started panic buying things in
excess and stored them in fear. These challenges have made the health care supply
chain even more complex (Hussain et al. 2018; Mathur et al. 2018).
In general, Health Care Supply Chain (HCSC) refers to the purchase of health-
related products and supply is based on the demand (Mustaffa and Potter 2009;
Dobrzykowski et al. 2019). It also includes ensuring the services to the patient are
fulfilled on time by the hospital management (Mandal 2018). Based on the literature,
the key enablers that are needed in HCSC to enable better supply chain relationships
among the members, are illustrated in Fig. 9.1.
The key enablers of the health care supply chain are inventory, organisation,
customer service. It is required to streamline the co-ordination between the enablers
to minimise the waste and operational costs and provide timely services to the patients
(Scavarda et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2020a).
• Inventory —It is necessary to optimise the inventory cost on medical wears, drugs
to reduce overall health care supply chain cost.

Fig. 9.1 Enablers in Health

Care Supply Chain (HCSC)
9 Need for Embracing New Digital Technologies … 101

• Organisation—It is required to have a skilled workforce who can adopt new tech-
nologies and have better collaboration with both upstream and downstream supply
chain members.
• Customer Services—It is a main part of the overall HCSC as the patient need to
be satisfied with the proper treatment and hygienic factors.

The case organisation is one of the premier hospitals that are interested in exploring
digital technologies and ready for digital transformation. Based on the discussion
with the management, the roadmap to implement the digital technologies is planned
in a phased manner and it is encouraging to see they are willing to invest in technology
to increase the inventory visibility and satisfy the customer requirements.
The management of healthcare believes that digital technologies will reshape
the HCSC in the next five years as it lays the foundation for the future strategy of
the organisation. The present practices in procuring healthcare items have multiple
complications in managing the supplier. Therefore, there is a need for the integra-
tion of digital technologies. Considering the emergence of new technologies and the
problems in the current situation of healthcare because of COVID-19, this article
assesses the influencing criteria for each enabler and proposes new digital technolo-
gies to adopt so that the overall operational efficiency of a healthcare organisation
is improved. More specifically QFD based on evaluation is conducted in the case
organisation to understand the importance of each criterion which affects the overall
supply chain cost. Based on the outcome of results, prioritisation is done on the
criteria and recommendations on the new technologies are proposed.
Based on the literature, there is a limited number of papers available on the appli-
cation of digital technologies in HCSC. In addition, it is also observed that the health
care organisations are not having complete trust in their supplier because of multiple
flaws in the present supply chain process. Thus, the study on digital technologies in
healthcare is essential to bring more value the organisations. Therefore, this study
intends to contribute to the health care industry to assess the new technologies and use
in the present COVID-19 condition wherever possible by addressing the following
research questions.
RQ1. What are the challenges faced by HCSC and how these challenges can be
addressed with technologies?
RQ2. Are digital technologies really going to help in collaborating with SC members
to bring more visibility on inventory and improve their performance?
To address the mentioned research questions, the following objectives are defined
• To identify the criteria for enabler−Inventory, Organisation, Customer Service.
• To develop a framework for HCSC.
• To assess the key criteria and propose new technologies to fulfill the gap in the
present system.

By answering the research objectives, this article helps organisations to know how
new technologies can help in managing the HCSC process.
102 M. Ethirajan and J. Kandasamy

Fig. 9.2 Research

methodology framework

9.2 Methodology

A literature review is conducted based on challenges faced in the healthcare supply

chain. Further, the work is done on HCSC and digital technologies is analysed.
Thereafter, a framework is developed for HCSC based on the literature. The QFD
based approach is applied to assess the importance of each criterion in HCSC. Based
on the outcome, new technologies are recommended to management. Figure 9.2
shows the flowchart of steps involved in the methodology.

9.3 Development of a Framework for Healthcare Supply

Chain

The literature reveals that assessing HCSC for adopting new digital technologies
was not focused on earlier and thus it is considered as a gap. Based on the litera-
ture, a new framework for HCSC is proposed as illustrated in Table 9.1. The frame-
work is formulated from three perspectives of HCSC namely inventory, organisation,
customer service to evaluate the criteria for adopting new digital technologies. The
framework has two layers as tabulated in Table 9.1. The first layer contains three
enablers, which influence the HCSC; the second layer comprises 16 criteria. This
framework is used for assessing HCSC from digital technologies perspective.
9 Need for Embracing New Digital Technologies … 103

Table 9.1 Framework for assessing HCSC for adopting new digital technologies
Enabler Criteria Source
Inventory Hoarding the goods Sarigöllü et al. (2020), Maharani and
Rabbani (2020)
Sudden demand surge for specific Haque et al. (2020), Polater and
items Demirdogen (2018)
Item expiry Priyan and Mala (2020), Tat et al.
(2020)
Stock-out that leads to additional Franco and Alfonso-Lizarazo
procurement cost (2020), Lucchese et al. (2020)
Pilferage Lawrence et al. (2020)
Organisation Workflow design Celesti et al. (2020)
Staff and worker’s coordination Iyengar et al. (2020), Dobrzykowski
(2019)
Data security Dixit et al. (2019), Ageron et al.
(2020)
Human security Göleç and Karadeniz (2020),
Khosravi and Izbirak (2019)
Spend management Govindan et al. (2020), Alotaibi
et al. (2020)
Customer service Hygienic and clean environment Rizou et al. (2020)
Transparency in treatment expense Alotaibi et al. (2020), Buttigieg et al.
(2020)
Quick response to queries Schoenfelder et al. (2020),
Jambulingam and Kathuria (2020)
Virtual access to frontline workers Tan et al. (2020), Iyengar et al.
(2020)
Real-time information sharing Ageron et al. (2020), Wan et al.
(2020)
Virtual guidance Badri et al. (2020), Sarkis (2020)

9.4 Case Study

The study has been performed in a premier hospital situated in Tamilnadu, India
(hereafter denoted as XYZ). XYZ is the best-suited organisation to conduct this
study as they are already using few IT tools and matured with SCM operations. In
addition, they are positive in adopting new technologies and they want to distinguish
themselves as a global leader in healthcare management.
104 M. Ethirajan and J. Kandasamy

9.4.1 Assessment of HCSC Using QFD

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a technique being used for translation of the
wants and desires of the customers into a language and specifications that can be
used by organisations to develop a matrix and assess the criteria (Deepu and Ravi
2020; Wang et al. 2020b). The QFD assessment will help in subjecting any concern
to Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis and remain
alert and responsive to its existing/would be customers’ ever demanding and changing
wants and needs (Zhang et al. 2020; Mor et al. 2019). QFD approach is chosen for
this evaluation as it is the best method in identifying specific sector organisation
needs and helps to convert the requirements into technical specifications through the
survey (He et al. 2020).

9.4.2 Construction of Criteria and Relative Weight

The evaluation of each criterion has been done based on Likert’s scale with the
following points.
• Completely satisfied−5,
• Relatively satisfied−4,
• Satisfied−3,
• Relatively unsatisfied−2,
• Completely unsatisfied−1.

The first column ‘Importance Rate’ (IR ) of the weight characteristic chart is given by
the stakeholders belongs to different departments. The second column, Current level
(C) shows the requirements related to the services provided at present, the stake-
holders’ answers to the questionnaire are displayed. The third column, Improvement
Plans (IP ) displays the stakeholders’ desire for the future.
The fourth column, Improvement Rate (RI ) is calculated using the relation

Ip
RI = (9.1)
C
The weight was established according to the customer’s requirements and
complaints. The fifth column shows the Service point (S) where the quality charac-
teristics representing the stakeholder’s desires and needs are displayed, the Service
point (S) can be described by the following statements and weights.
a. In certain service points, the stakeholder requires maximum. Attention based
on certain service points that are included in the hospital expenses−1.5
b. The stakeholder states that certain attributes should be improved in the near
future−1.2
9 Need for Embracing New Digital Technologies … 105

c. The stakeholder considers certain attributes less important, that is, it does not
matter if it changed or not−1.0.
The last two columns represent the Absolute Weight (AW ) and Relative Weight
(Rw ), which are calculated using the relations

AW = IR . RI . S (9.2)

AW
RW =  x 100 (9.3)
AW

Based on the mentioned calculation, Table 9.2 is formulated and relative weight
is calculated for each criterion.

9.5 Results and Discussions

The relative weight is calculated using the QFD approach and ranking is given for the
criteria. The criteria identified for new technology-based improvement are illustrated
in Table 9.3.
The outcome of results shows that the top six criteria have a mix of different
enablers such as Inventory, Organisation and Customer Service of HCSC. The results
show that the enabler ‘Inventory’ and ‘Customer Service’ are having the highest
relative weight (16.54) in HCSC. So the organisation needs to focus on the corre-
sponding criteria that are ‘Sudden demand surge for specific items’ and ‘Virtual
access to frontline workers’. This result matched with the atmosphere surfaced at
XYZ.
Managerial Implications
The outcome of the new digital technology assessment has been reported to
management with the improvement areas identified in HCSC and recommenda-
tions for the top six criteria are tabulated in Table 9.4. Management is reviewing
the recommendations and considerations to transform into a digital organisation.

9.6 Conclusion

The COVID-19 has spotlighted the major healthcare supply chain problems on a
massive scale and highlights the need for new technology deployment. It is essential
to monitor the patients remotely during the pandemic situation, assess their changing
needs and prioritise the treatment. In this study, a framework for the health care
supply chain is developed and the criteria are analysed using QFD based approach.
The framework is designed based on key enablers such as inventory, organisation, and
106 M. Ethirajan and J. Kandasamy

customer service. Based on the study, ‘Inventory’ and ‘Customer Service’ are resulted
as the top enabler. Both criteria ‘Sudden demand surge for specific items’ and ‘Virtual
access to frontline workers’ have the highest relative weight of 16.54. Thus, these
two criteria require immediate attention by the organisation to deploy the technology.
The next top priority for the organisation is to focus on ‘Data Security’ which has a

Table 9.2 Evaluation of HCSC criteria

Sl. Criteria Importance Current Desired Rate of Service Absolute Relative
No rate level level improvement point weight weight
IR C IP RI S AW RW
1. Sudden 5 2 5 2.5 1.5 37.5 16.54
demand
surge for
specific
items
2. Pilferage 4 2 3 1.5 1 6 2.64
3. Workflow 3 2 3 1.5 1.2 5.4 2.38
design
4. Stock-out 5 2 5 2.5 1.5 18.75 8.27
that leads to
additional
procurement
cost
5. Real-time 4 2 3 1.5 1.2 7.2 3.18
information
sharing
6. Item expiry 3 1 3 3 1.5 13.5 5.95
7. Data 5 1 4 4 1.5 30 13.23
Security
8. Staff and 3 1 2 2 1 6 2.64
worker’s
co-ordination
9. Spend 4 2 3 1.5 1 6 2.64
Management
10. Virtual 5 3 5 1.67 1.5 37.5 16.54
access to
frontline
workers
11. Workflow 4 2 3 1.5 1 6 2.64
design
12. Hoarding the 4 3 4 1.33 1.2 6.384 2.81
goods
13. Transparency 5 3 5 1.67 1.5 12.53 5.52
in treatment
expense
(continued)
9 Need for Embracing New Digital Technologies … 107

Table 9.2 (continued)

Sl. Criteria Importance Current Desired Rate of Service Absolute Relative
No rate level level improvement point weight weight
IR C IP RI S AW RW
14. Human 4 2 3 1.5 1.2 7.2 3.18
Security
15. Hygienic and 5 2 4 2 1.2 12 5.29
clean
environment
16. Quick 3 1 2 2 1.2 7.2 3.18
response to
queries

226.67

Table 9.3 Ranking based on relative weight for HCSC criteria

Rank Enabler Criteria Relative weight
1 Inventory Sudden demand surge for specific items 16.54
1 Customer service Virtual access to frontline workers 16.54
2 Organisation Data Security 13.23
3 Inventory Stock-out that leads to additional procurement cost 8.27
4 Inventory Item expiry 5.95
5 Customer service Transparency in treatment expense 5.52

relative weight of 13.23. For the identified top three criteria, new technologies such
as Big Data, the Internet of Things and Cloud Computing are proposed in HCSC.
It is pleasing to know from management that they are intended to consider the
recommendations to transform their organisation into a digital healthcare supply
chain organisation. With new technology upgrades, it is essential to identify the
COVID-19 needs and address the concerns faster, provide more safety at an optimal
supply chain cost. Besides, implementing new technologies makes the organisation
be a pioneer in the healthcare industry and the demands of stakeholders are attended
to greatly thereby increase in customer satisfaction.

9.6.1 Future Research Scope

This study is performed in a medium-sized health organisation and with a limited data
set collected from stakeholders. The volume of data can be larger when researchers
focus on bigger organisations to check if results vary with a bigger data set. Further,
the current research is based on the feedback received from a case organisation in
108 M. Ethirajan and J. Kandasamy

Table 9.4 New technology recommendations for HCSC

Enabler Criteria Technology Recommendations
Inventory Sudden demand surge Big data – Adopt the big
for specific items data-driven forecast
supply chain tools to
receive a demand
spike alert, predict
ununiform demand
pattern
– Explore predictive
analytics to model
foreseeable
dependencies of the
individual items
Customer service Virtual access to IoT – Evaluate technology
frontline workers upgrades such as
IoT-based medical
devices. Transform
from preventive to
predictive healthcare
practices
Organisation Data security Cloud computing/IoT – Implement robust
cloud computing
applications along
with industrial IoT
devices
Inventory Stock-out that leads to Big data – Use inventory
additional procurement management big data
cost analytics to analyse
the historical patterns
to determine stockout
and implement
vendor-managed
inventory (VMI) to
enable auto-replenish
the items well before
stock out
Inventory Item expiry Cloud computing/IoT – Use of cloud-based
expiry system with
IoT technology
Customer service Transparency in Artificial Intelligence – Use virtual consultant
treatment expense (AI) app to alert the
customer by sending
automatic notifications
with Patients estimated
expenses and actual
bills with the reason
for any differences
9 Need for Embracing New Digital Technologies … 109

India. Researchers are encouraged to perform a similar study in any developing

countries such as Argentina, Indonesia or China that are similar organisational
arrangements and to validate the results post COVID-19.

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Chapter 10
Challenges Analysis of Leagile Supply
Chains in Manufacturing Context
During COVID-19

Rohit Agrawal and S. Vinodh

Abstract Developments in the field of Information Technology (IT) increases its

utilisation in the manufacturing sector. Competition is increasing in the supply chain
to satisfy personalised demands from customers and enhancing the relationship with
the customer. To deal with problems in the conventional supply chain, industries are
nowadays focusing mainly on leagile supply chain which has the capability to deal
with all mentioned difficulties. The focus of this study is to analyse the challenges
of leagile supply chain during COVID-19. 14 challenges have been considered from
literature analysis. A Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique has been
applied to analyse and prioritise the identified challenges. In this study, the Fuzzy
VIKOR technique has been used for analysing the challenges. The conduct of the
study helps the industry practitioners to critically analyse the challenges of leagile
supply chain and further facilitate them to derive strategic plans to cope up with those
challenges.

Keywords Leanness · Agility · Leagile supply chains · Challenges · MCDM ·

Fuzzy VIKOR

10.1 Introduction

Global competition and market uncertainty lead the organisation to respond quickly
and efficiently. With the increasing demand and prices of resources, studies on the
supply chain have become a key role to take a better decision and making effective
strategies (Haq and Boddu 2017). The traditional supply chain has some difficul-
ties in dealing with inventory cost, bullwhip effect, and quick responsiveness (Zhang
et al. 2012). To deal with such problems, industries are nowadays focusing mainly on
leagile supply chain which has the capability to deal with all mentioned difficulties.
The concept of Leagility is significant in the current scenario. Leagility is an amalga-
mation of both the lean and agile paradigm. Leagile supply chain which has benefits

R. Agrawal · S. Vinodh (B)

Department of Production Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil
Nadu, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 113
A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_10
114 R. Agrawal and S. Vinodh

of both lean principles and agile concepts has the potential to deal with a competitive
environment (Haq and Boddu 2017; Soni and Kodali 2009). Leagility concept has
been included in the supply chain to make effective utilisation of resources. The
manufacturing industry has been impacted in several ways due to COVID-19 and
the ongoing lockdown has put a lot of strain on the manufacturing industry. In the
unorganised domain, the situation was much worse, as the uncertainty would impact
smaller firms due to their lower profitability. This has been attributed due to lower
production, lower offtake. The major proportion of employees stop coming into work,
due to government directives which impacted the scale of operations and produc-
tion volume. The focus of this study is to analyse the challenges of leagile supply
chain in COVID-19. Several challenges have been identified such as disruption of the
supply chain, increase in assembly line length because of social distancing, central-
isation of facilities, high inventory level, demand uncertainty and so on (Banerjee
and Mukhopadhyay 2016; Galankashi and Helmi 2016; Hamisi 2011; Manuel et al.
2015; Fadaki et al. 2019).

10.2 Literature Review

Haq and Boddu (2017) analysed the enablers of leagile supply chain for enhancing
leagility of a firm. The fuzzy QFD approach was used to identify potential enablers
of leagility. A case study of a food processing industry was presented and enables
of leagility were analysed. This study used Fuzzy AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS for
analysing enablers of leagility. The study suggested that ‘collaborative relationship
with supplier and customer’ and ‘electronic data exchange’ are the top enablers for
enhancing leagility in a firm. The study helped in the implementation of leagile
supply chain to achieve cost-effectiveness and responsiveness in the market.
Banerjee and Mukhopadhyay (2016) aimed to develop an approach for leagility
in the supply chain. They developed a seven-stage methodological framework by
considering both analytical and mathematical procedures. The study used Data Envel-
opment Analysis (DEA) and new design thinking approach for the identification and
analysis of constraints. They presented a case study to validate the developed frame-
work and found significant benefits on various leanness and agility parameters such as
the reduction in rework and operation cost, improvement in cash flow and enhanced
customer service.
Galankashi and Helmi (2016) aimed to identify and prioritise operational leagile
supply chain strategies. They prioritised leagile supply chain operational activities
using AHP methodology. Finally, they derived a framework showing which leagile
activities are important at each stage of the supply chain.
Raj et al. (2018) aimed to analyse the supply chain performance of an organisation
by considering three paradigms namely lean, agile, and leagile. They developed a
conceptual framework considering leagile supply chain metrics. They used the ANP
approach to compare three paradigms of the supply chain. From the result, they found
that the performance of leagile supply chain is better than the lean and agile supply
10 Challenges Analysis of Leagile Supply Chains … 115

chain. Further, they used multi-grade fuzzy approach to evaluate the leagility index
of the supply chain and to recognise weaker areas. They suggested that industry
practitioners should focus on zero inventory level and new product development to
deal with changing environment.
Banihashemi and Heydarnia (2018) aimed to develop an index to measure agility
and leanness of any organisation and its supply chain. They developed a framework
to evaluate the leanness and agility of a firm by considering various criteria from the
literature study. They did a questionnaire-based survey by considering three organisa-
tions and evaluated the leanness, agility and leagile index for all three organisations.
They concluded that in general, agility index was found to be better when compared
with the leanness index. And, they also suggested adopting both strategies together
to maintain an efficient supply chain.
Fadaki et al. (2019) aimed to analyse the drivers of the supply chain from both
leanness and agility perspectives. The authors conducted a survey on 299 Australian
firms by preparing a designed questionnaire. The study used the partial least square
method to analyse the survey data and the result reveals that the level of uncertainty
affects directly to leagility index. Further, the authors suggested implementing a
balanced leagile supply chain to deal with uncertainty in demand and supply.
Li et al. (2020) aimed to analyse supplier selection by considering lean and agile
perspectives. The study shortlisted the criteria for analysing suppliers from the liter-
ature study and with help of expert opinion. A total of fifteen criteria have been short-
listed for analysis. The study used the DEMATEL approach for prioritising criteria
that aid in leagile supplier selection. They presented a case study of a Chinese textile
manufacturing firm and their findings revealed that ‘Quality’ is the most important
criteria for leagile supplier selection. This study helped in effective decision-making
in supplier selection.

10.3 Methodology

In this study, fuzzy ‘Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje’

(VIKOR) is used as a solution methodology. Fuzzy VIKOR is an MCDM based
method developed by Opricovic and Tzeng in the year 2004. VIKOR method focuses
on prioritising alternatives by considering various conflicting criteria. VIKOR
method provides compromising solutions which are close to ideal solutions. The
reason for selecting Fuzzy VIKOR over other MCDM methods such as AHP,
MOORA and SAW is that it identifies compromising solutions by comparing all
alternatives with the ideal solution.
The steps in the Fuzzy VIKOR method are as follows (Shemshadi et al. 2011):
Step 1: Define the objective of the study and identify the challenges which need to
be analysed
Step 2: Select suitable criteria to analyse the identified challenges
116 R. Agrawal and S. Vinodh

Table 10.1 The fuzzy scale

Scale for criteria weights Scale for challenges rating
used in the study
Linguistics Fuzzy number Linguistics Fuzzy number
Very poor (0,0,0.1) Very low (0,0,1)
Poor (0,0.1,0.3) Low (0,1,3)
Fairly poor (0.1, 0.3, 0.5) Medium low (1,3,5)
Fair (0.3, 0.5, 0.7) Medium (3,5,7)
Fairly high (0.5, 0.7, 0.9) Medium Good (5,7,9)
High (0.7, 0.9, 1) Good (7,9,10)
Very high (0.9, 1, 1) Very good (9,10,10)

Step 3: Formulation or adoption of a Fuzzy scale to collect data from experts.

The scale used in this study is mentioned in Table 10.1.
Step 4: Defuzzification of criteria weight and challenges rating.
In this study, Eq. 10.1 has been  used for the defuzzification of collected data.
For a TFN xi j = li j , m i j , u i j .
Defuzzification of a fuzzy number can be calculated as (Agrawal et al. 2017):

li j + (4 ∗ m i j ) + u i j
yi j = (10.1)
6

Step 5: Calculation of aggregate criteria weights and challenges rating.

In this step, data from different experts could be combined to get aggregate criteria
weights and challenges rating using Eq. 10.2.
n
j =1 yi j
zi j = (10.2)
n
Where, n is number of experts.
Step 6: Calculation of best and worst values of challenges. It is represented by
   
max zi j  f or bene f it criteria
f j∗ = (10.3)
min z i j f or cost criteria
   
min z i j  f or bene f it criteria
f j− = (10.4)
max z i j f or cost criteria

Step 7: Calculate utility value (Si ), regret value (Ri ) and VIKOR index value (Q i )
 
f j∗ − z i j
di j = Ri =   (10.5)
f j∗ − f j−
10 Challenges Analysis of Leagile Supply Chains … 117

Si = w j ∗ di j (10.6)

 
Ri = max w j , di j (10.7)

v j (Si − S ∗ ) (1 − v j )(Ri − R ∗ )
Qi = + (10.8)
(S − − S ∗ ) (R − − R ∗ )

Where,
S ∗ = min(Si )
S − = max(Si )
R ∗ = min(Ri )
R − = max(Ri )
v j is maximum strategy group weight
(1 − v j ) is weight of individual regret
Step 7: Ranking of challenges are based on Q values. The challenges which got
minimum Q value is ranked first.
Suggesting compromising solution:
Challenges are ranked based on increasing order of Q value as shown in step 7 only
if it follows two conditions.
   
Condition 1: Acceptable advantage: if Q C (2) − Q C (1) ≥ K 1−1 where C (1) , C (2)
shows first and second position of challenges based on Q value and K denotes number
of challenges.
 
Condition 2: Acceptable stability: the challenge Q C (1) is stable in decision making,
if it got the same position based on R and S values also.
If any of the conditions are not satisfied, then there exists a compromising solution.
1. Challenges C (1) and C (2) will act as a compromising solution, if only condi-
tion 2 is not satisfied.
2. Challenges C (1) , C (2) , C (3) , . . . , C (K ) will act as a compromising solution if
only condition 1 is not fulfilled.
 
Where, C (K ) is found by Q C (K ) − Q(C (1) ) < (K 1−1) for maximum ‘K’.

10.4 Case Study

In this study, challenges of leagile supply chain have been analysed. From the liter-
ature review, fourteen potential challenges have been identified pertaining to leagile
supply chain strategies. The list of considered challenges is presented in Table 10.2.
After identifying challenges of leagile supply chain, this study identifies several
criteria to analyse challenges. In this regard, this study considers five crucial criteria
118 R. Agrawal and S. Vinodh

Table 10.2 Identified leagile supply chain challenges

S.No. Challenges References
1 Failure to meet the scheduled shipping Hamisi (2011), Manuel et al. (2015),
date (C1 ) Banerjee and Mukhopadhyay (2016),
2 Long lead times for order confirmation Galankashi and Helmi (2016), Fadaki et al.
from production (C2 ) (2020)
3 Change orders after order booking leading
to disruption in manufacturing (C3 )
4 Culture of innovation and improvement in
the company (C4 )
5 Inability to consolidate and also rework
during shipment (C5 )
6 Inability to understand and meet customer
requirements (C6 )
7 Rework/effort wastage/Longer lead time
(C7 )
8 Cope with the demand variation (C8 )
9 Implementation of Electronic Data
Interchange (C9 )
10 Complexities associated with global
sourcing (C10 )
11 High inventory levels (C11 )
12 Outdated and/or non-integrated
technologies (C12 )
13 Disruption of the supply chain (C13 )
14 Increase in assembly line length because
of social distancing (C14 )

which are important in leagile supply chain practices. The criteria are price, quality,
time, flexibility, and ability to collaborate.
After finalising criteria, input sheets have been prepared to collect data for
analysing leagile supply chain challenges. A team of four experts has been formed
and input sheets have been sent to them for data collection.
The collected data is defuzzified using Eq. 10.1 and aggregate rating of challenges
has been calculated. To calculate the aggregate rating of challenges and weights of
criteria, Eq. 10.2 is used.
The aggregate rating of challenges and weights of criteria is presented in
Table 10.3.
The next step is to identify the best and worst values of each criterion. The most
important challenge for a particular criterion is termed as its best challenge value.
Similarly, the least important challenge for a particular criterion is termed as its
least challenge value. For each criterion, the best value and worst value have been
identified using Eqs. 10.3 and 10.4. The identified best value and worst value for
each criterion are presented in Table 10.4.
10 Challenges Analysis of Leagile Supply Chains … 119

Table 10.3 Identified leagile supply chain challenges

Criteria Price Quality Time Flexibility Ability to collaborate
Weights 0.862 0.837 0.6 0.792 0.696
Challenges rating Price Quality Time Flexibility Ability to collaborate
C1 8.625 6.458 7.417 7.417 7.917
C2 7.917 6 8.375 7.917 6
C3 9.083 5.5 9.333 6.917 6.958
C4 6.958 9.333 8.625 8.167 6.958
C5 9.083 6.958 6.917 7.917 6
C6 6.958 6.958 7.917 8.625 7.917
C7 7.917 6.917 7.917 6.958 7.917
C8 6.958 5 6.958 6 6.958
C9 7.917 7.917 7.917 7.417 7.417
C10 8.625 6.917 7.917 7.917 6.958
C11 7.917 6.917 6.458 7.417 6
C12 7.917 6.958 6.917 6.958 6.958
C13 7.417 5.958 6.958 6.958 6
C14 9.333 7.917 6.458 5 6.958

Table 10.4 Identified best and worst value of each criterion

Criteria Price Quality Time Flexibility Ability to collaborate
f∗ 6.958 9.333 9.333 8.625 7.917
f− 9.333 5 6.458 5 6

After identifying the best and worst values of all challenges, the next step is to
calculate utility value (Si ), regret value (Ri ). Equations 10.5–10.7 have been used to
calculate utility value and regret value. Table 10.5 presents utility value and regret
value for each challenge.
Further VIKOR index value (Q i ) to be found. For calculating VIKOR index value
(Q i ), Eq. 10.8 has been used. To calculate the VIKOR index, the first values of S ∗ ,
S − , R ∗ , and R − have been calculated as shown below:
S ∗ = min(Si ) = 0.596
S − = max(Si ) = 2.875
R ∗ = min(Ri ) = 0.348
R − = max(Ri ) = 0.862
Then value of v j , that is, strategy group weight is specified as 0.5 based on a
study from previous literature on leagile supply chain. Then finally VIKOR index is
calculated based on Eq. 10.8. Ranking of challenges have been done based on Utility
value (Si ), Regret value (Ri ), and VIKOR index as depicted in Table 10.6.
120 R. Agrawal and S. Vinodh

Table 10.5 Identified leagile

Challenges Utility value (Si ) Regret value (Ri )
supply chain challenges
C1 1.824 0.605
C2 2.042 0.696
C3 2.233 0.771
C4 0.596 0.348
C5 2.585 0.771
C6 0.755 0.459
C7 1.474 0.467
C8 2.254 0.837
C9 1.363 0.348
C10 1.87 0.605
C11 2.374 0.696
C12 2.023 0.504
C13 2.374 0.696
C14 2.875 0.862

Table 10.6 Ranking of challenges

Challenges Utility value (Si ) Rank Regret value (Ri ) Rank VIKOR index (Qi ) Rank
C1 1.824 5 0.605 7 0.52 6
C2 2.042 8 0.696 10 0.655 8
C3 2.233 9 0.771 12 0.771 11
C4 0.596 1 0.348 1 0 1
C5 2.585 13 0.771 12 0.848 13
C6 0.755 2 0.459 3 0.143 2
C7 1.474 4 0.467 4 0.308 4
C8 2.254 10 0.837 13 0.839 12
C9 1.363 3 0.348 2 0.168 3
C10 1.87 6 0.605 7 0.53 7
C11 2.374 12 0.696 10 0.728 10
C12 2.023 7 0.504 5 0.465 5
C13 2.374 11 0.696 10 0.728 9
C14 2.875 14 0.862 14 1 14

The final step is the derivation of a compromising solution. Challenges are ranked
based on increasing order of Q value as shown in step 7 only if it follows two
conditions as mentioned in methodology.
   
Condition 1: Q C (2) − Q C (1) ≥ K 1−1 ; 0.143 − 0 ≥ 14−1 1
; 0.143 ≥ 0.077; hence
satisfied condition 1.
10 Challenges Analysis of Leagile Supply Chains … 121
 
Condition 2: the challenge Q C (1) is stable in decision making if it got the same
position based on R and S values also. From Table 10.6, it can be found that the
fourth challenge occupied the top position from all perspectives including R, S and
Q values. Hence, it concludes condition 2 also gets satisfied.
As both conditions are satisfied, the final ranking of challenges is based on the
VIKOR index (Qi ) value.

10.5 Results

In this study, challenges of leagile supply chain have been analysed using the fuzzy
VIKOR method. From the analysis, it is found that ‘Culture of innovation and
improvement in the company (C4 )’ is the most vital challenge for leagile supply
chain. ‘Inability to understand and meet customer requirements (C6 )’ and ‘Imple-
mentation of Electronic Data Interchange (C9 )’ are the second and third important
challenges for leagile supply chain.
The priority order of the challenges is C4 > C6 > C9 > C7 > C12 > C1 > C10 > C2
> C13 > C11 > C3 > C8 > C5 > C14 as presented in Table 10.7.
The identification of topmost leagile supply chain challenges helps industry
practitioners to make effective strategic plans to overcome those challenges.

Table 10.7 Final ranking of

Challenges VIKOR index (Qi ) Ranking
challenges
C1 0.52 6
C2 0.655 8
C3 0.771 11
C4 0 1
C5 0.848 13
C6 0.143 2
C7 0.308 4
C8 0.839 12
C9 0.168 3
C10 0.53 7
C11 0.728 10
C12 0.465 5
C13 0.728 9
C14 1 14
122 R. Agrawal and S. Vinodh

10.6 Conclusions

COVID-19 pandemic has affected the almost entire world and because of this, manu-
facturing sectors are suffering a lot. It has heavily affected the supply chain because
of transportation issues, labour issues arise due to COVID-19. Hence, the current
scenario required advanced principles to deal with all such issues. In order to facil-
itate manufacturing firms to gradually stabilise production performance and ulti-
mately to attain business excellence, Leagile supply chains with enhanced focus
could be a promising solution. In this viewpoint, the study focused on the analysis of
challenges of leagile supply chains using the MCDM approach during COVID-19.
The priority order of challenges is being derived. Based on the study, it is found that
‘Culture of innovation and improvement in the company (C4 )’, ‘Inability to under-
stand and meet customer requirements (C6 )’ and ‘Implementation of Electronic Data
Interchange (C9 )’ are top challenges for leagile supply chain.

References

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Banerjee, A., & Mukhopadhyay, S. K. (2016). A contemporary TOC innovative thinking process
in the backdrop of leagile supply chain. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 29(3),
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performance implications. International Journal of Production Research, 58(18), 5601–5623.
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Zhang, Y., Wang, Y., & Wu, L. (2012). Research on demand-driven leagile supply chain operation
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Chapter 11
Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply
Chains and the Role of Digitalisation:
A VUCA Approach

Kotha Raj Kumar Reddy and P. Kalpana

Abstract The alarming spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has made the entire
world anxious. It has not only created a global health crisis but has also resulted in
a poorly performing global economy. The entire world is investing their research
and development team into inventing a vaccine and the extensive process of vaccine
development seems to be taking a lifetime. Nevertheless, these tough times have trans-
formed the functioning of business activities and firms including work from home
across the world, operation with minimal staff in a firm’s location, etc. Therefore,
this chapter focuses on demonstrating the scenario of post-COVID supply chains.
In this context, we must focus on sustainable and efficient supply chains to lead the
business from the front. Here, our aim is to discuss the challenges in supply chains in
the post-COVID era, the role of digital technologies, the essence of risk assessment,
and industry 4.0 supply chains. Digital technologies such as analytics, blockchain,
artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and quantum computing hold the
key to ensure future supply chain security, safety, sustainability, visibility, and trans-
parency. Also, we have discussed VUCAness and its essence, and risk assessment
frameworks.

Keywords Global supply chain · Digitalisation · Risk assessment · VUCA

approach

K. R. K. Reddy
Supply Chain Analytics - SME, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
P. Kalpana (B)
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Information Technology Design &
Manufacturing (IIITDM), Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, India
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 125
A. R. Sakthivel et al. (eds.), Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruptions:
Post COVID-19, Management and Industrial Engineering,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72575-4_11
126 K. R. K. Reddy and P. Kalpana

11.1 Introduction

Currently, the entire world is experiencing a difficult time due to the COVID-19
(SARS - CoV-2) pandemic. As per the records, COVID-19 is said to have originated
in Wuhan and within no time it has emerged as a global pandemic. WHO (World
Health Organization) declared COVID-19, a global pandemic on March 11, 2020,
and efforts all over the world are being taken to understand this novel virus. As per
11/08/2020 confirmed COVID cases crossed 20 million cases (Global COVID-19
information 2020) with over 7 lakh deaths across the world. Although a large popu-
lation of patients is recovering (~13 million), it is still a deadly virus that has forced
various governments across the nations to enforce partial lockdown/safety restric-
tion in place to contain the spread of this fast pandemic due to human transmission.
As a result, few restrictions on the imports and exports have been enforced until
the situation gets better. As almost the entire world fights hard with COVID-19,
the officials are focusing on mitigating the spread of the virus by tracing infected
people efficiently as soon as possible and isolating them by maintaining a quarantined
environment to combat this deadly virus, which helps a lot to reduce the potential
hotspots. Epidemiologists, Virologists, and Immunologists are keenly studying the
existing mathematical models and techniques to deal with COVID better. In this
critical time only, few are thinking out of the box and focusing on building a system
that can absorb these disruptions. COVID-19 has become a part of this society and
some say it will stay for a long time. As a result, it seems tough to get back to the
normal pre-COVID days and may require us to define a new normal, and that normal
will be varying time to time. There are many challenges for the supply chain due to
this pandemic, that is material shortage, delivery delays, performance degradation in
terms of revenue, decrease in service level and productivity, and disruptions in supply,
demand, inventory, and logistics. Global supply chains have been impacted severely
due to this pandemic. The outbreak in Wuhan resulted in almost 51000 companies
across the world which had direct suppliers in Wuhan getting heavily impacted.
Due to this pandemic, supply chains are experiencing unprecedented disruptions in
supply, demand, and transportation and it is impossible to solve the critical challenges
by generalising supply chains, because each supply chain is unique. For example, the
automotive industry may get a boost again because of mandating social distancing
and it will be difficult for farmers to sell their crops during this pandemic and post-
pandemic too. In supply chains, there are a few ambiguities, that is how long the SC
can sustain a disruption, how long it takes for an SC to recover from the pandemic,
standard operating policies will complicate the operation and those require certain
changes for smooth transactions.
Here we are trying to study the impact of COVID-19 on various supply chains,
and also try to get an idea of how supply chains are going to behave after this COVID-
19 pandemic, what will be key challenges for supply chains post-COVID-19. Key
research questions we are trying to answer are as follows:
1. How to deal with supply chain VUCA?
11 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains … 127

2. Which industries have been impacted most and least by the COVID-19
pandemic?
3. What will be the new challenges for SC due to the on-going pandemic?
4. What are the long-term impacts on SC’s due to the COVID-19 pandemic?
5. What are the key areas to improve, to achieve maximum efficiency in a new
normal environment for supply chains?
6. What SC practitioners can do in order to ensure smooth and frictionless
operations?
7. Is digitalisation and adopting emerging technologies going to benefit SC
activities?
8. How to tackle similar disruptions soon?
9. What strategies can lead to improved efficiency of SC activities post-COVID-
19?

Companies should understand the necessary changes to be made or actions to be

taken to mitigate the risk against the disruptions. The on-going pandemic will create
new problems which need organisational attention, as well as creating a new scope
for business, if an organisation (can be well established or medium) should realize
the need, demand, opportunities, and disruptions or else they will be outplayed by
the competitors and new entrants in the industry. Organisations should go back and
revise the strategy, vision, and mission statements again. COVID-19 pandemic has
tested the various systems and business processes, if the product or service can
be maintained affordably with the adoption of a novel method for their business
processes for a smooth and frictionless environment for the future, even in tough
times like COVID-19.

11.2 Risk Assessment (Black Swan & Perfect Storms)

Two terms in risk management that got researchers’/practitioners’ attention these

days are “black swans” and “perfect storms” which help to describe the unthinkable
or the extremely unlikely which have never been encountered before. The universal
truth is that the swans are known to be white in colour, and there is very little chance
of them being black in colour, that is black swans can be treated as outliers. So,
a black swan is an event that is even impossible to imagine, because we do not
normally encounter and is highly unlikely (Paté-Cornell 2012). For example, the
on-going COVID-19 crisis is the epitome of the black swan. Perfect storms are also
like black swan disasters, but there will be a chance to predict the disaster in advance,
considering the previous experience or current information. For example, the 9/11
attacks were not black swans, they were perfect storms since there was a scope of
predicting the attack as the FBI have known to have some clues in advance regarding
the attacks (Black swan and perfect stroms 2012).
Risk assessment is trivial in terms of systems, their functional components,
interdependencies, and standard operating procedures (SoP) for any firm to have
128 K. R. K. Reddy and P. Kalpana

a better understanding of their stand. The risk assessment is essential to redesign the
existing processes/procedures to enhance flexibility and adaptability. Let’s discuss
two examples to understand the importance of risk assessment.
1. In recent times sanitisation has become very essential to ensure health safety.
As a result, many apartments and firms have started ensuring proper sanitisation
norms. People also have been carrying sanitizers with them and there have been
cases of vehicles catching fire. Similarly, the supporting staff sanitises COVID
isolation centres and there have been reported cases of electrical fire accidents
due to callous use of sanitizers. The main problem is in the ignorance of people
of the new processes and the associated risks while adapting or implementing
a new system or process, therefore leading to hazardous accidents.
2. Poor governance, especially neglecting organisational indicators, process indi-
cators, and behavioural indicators, is another factor. Many disasters/failures
have occurred in firms due to a lack of attention to the mentioned indicators.

During such crises, it is imperative for any organisation to validate and improve its
agility and visibility in their SC’s, regardless of the industry type and it becomes
critical to leverage data-driven decision making for risk mitigation & resilience in
SC. The aim is to improve the visibility, transparency, resilience, and agility of SC.

11.2.1 VUCA

Across industries, the rise of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambi-
guity) is leading to change in the market and competition. VUCA is an acronym that
directly challenges the way leaders develop stabilities and direction to businesses,
VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and is used to
describe an environment and is also a trendy way of depicting unpredictable change
(Bennett and Lemoine 2014). Though the four words will have different meanings,
in a business context these are synonyms, after all, “How do you plan anything in
such a VUCA world?” matters.
Supply chains are no exception for the VUCA world; supply chains are complex
networks that involve multiple organisational presences with support/follow-up from
OEM internal employees. In most of the SC’s, there is insufficient data about
processes and products to comprehensively understand the situation while in some
cases; the understanding acquired by the existing data might not be of any value in
predicting instances or failures. It is thus required to have a good combination of
information and experimentation to understand the existing methods and infrastruc-
ture. So, the increase in complexity will result in increased volatility, uncertainty,
and ambiguity or vice versa.
1. Volatility—It provides a profit opportunity and it is a new reality, volatility
implies a relatively unstable change, that is data is available, and the situation is
understandable, but change is frequent and still unpredictable even after having
11 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains … 129

enough data and an understandable situation. Agility will be a key to tackle

volatility, resources and assets should be aggressively directed for potential
future flexibility. The equipment/assets are not meant to be sitting ideal, the
working environment should communicate details with each node.

a. Example: Price volatility is a part of managing supply chains, it is very

unpredictable, and it can be a direct risk for supply chain inefficiency.
Through agility in supply chain activities, supply chains can mitigate
volatility to a certain extent.

2. Uncertainty—It is an opportunity, uncertainty defines a lack of knowledge as

to whether an event results in unwelcome consequences, cause and effects are
studied and understood, but it is still unclear whether an event will create a
significant change. Information is critical to reducing uncertainties in the envi-
ronment and one should focus on increasing information sources and validate the
authenticity of the information. Organisations should focus on digitised industry
4.0 supply chains which can yield a lot of information about the processes and
transactions.
a. Example: Uncertainty is always a part of firm’s decision making but this has
become worse with the pandemic. Supply chain uncertainty is mostly asso-
ciated with decision-making in unprecedented events. The transparency
and visibility of information are key to reduce uncertainty in supply chain
activities post COVID. Potential problems to look for post-COVID are
i. What and how I’m going to deliver to customers?
ii. Is there any novel way for my current business processes, that is, the
pre-COVID business model to adapt to a post-COVID setup too?
iii. Price affordability and customer retaining, if we are adopting any
novel method for business processes or services.
iv. What will be the quality problems that the customers might face in
the post-COVID scenario?
v. How to keep decision makers informed about the activities post-
COVID for better transparency and visibility?
vi. New product launches and dealing with product launches of competi-
tors.
3. Complexity—Simplifying complexity is a major opportunity to make a differ-
ence in the industry, complexity is defined by an elaborate interconnected
network of information and procedures in the environment. Restructuring
internal operations & responsibilities to match external complexity is an effi-
cient way to address this complexity. Organisations must attempt to create a
tight synchronisation between internal capabilities and external requirements.
a. Example: Supply chain complexity is caused by interdependency, uncer-
tainty, variability, variety, etc. As discussed earlier one cause is the
generation of others. Key complexities to look for post COVID are
130 K. R. K. Reddy and P. Kalpana

i. Tailored and stringent delivery expectations of customers and

suppliers
ii. Faster lead times, safety, and trust in manufacturing
iii. Expanded products and services
iv. Expanding markets to new locations
v. New acquisitions and identifying potential new entrants for acquisi-
tion.
4. Ambiguity—Ambiguity equals opportunity, ambiguity arises when cause and
effect are not clearly understood and there is no precedence defined across events
for making predictions. Experimentation is a necessary requirement for miti-
gating ambiguity in an environment. Only through intelligent experimentation
can explain what strategies are beneficial and what is going wrong in firm’s
tough times, through these firms can update rules of business.
a. Example: Lack of clarity of situation in instances of the supply chain leads
to ambiguity. It can be the unclear regulatory environment, disruptions in
the industry, the preparedness of firms to absorb disruptions, etc.

11.3 Potential Challenges for Supply Chains

Post-COVID-19

1. Cyber security: With the increased digitisation and remote working culture
there is potential risk of data theft and fraudulent activities. So, firms must
invest in cybersecurity in order to secure their information.
2. Systems integration, intra and intercompany: For efficient decision making
and to reduce uncertainties the intra and intercompany systems must be
integrated.
3. Environment projection and safety regulations: After a pandemic, envi-
ronmental and safety precautions must be followed in order to maintain the
sustainability and safety of stakeholders.
4. Job skills and knowledge transfer: After these tough times companies will
realize their leaking instances, so new job profiles will be required in a firm in
a bulk.
5. International trade requirements and regulatory changes: Shift from
globalisation to regularisation
6. Autonomous vehicles: This was a far-hanging fruit for several years, now it
is becoming reality. In these tough times disruption in the automotive industry
will be a big blow for many traditional suppliers, and adapting is even tough for
them.
7. Transport modality shifts
11 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains … 131

How Will the Post-COVID-19 Situation Be?

Supply chains are becoming extremely complex and global in reach. However, most
of the firms are unaware of their deep supply chain network; most of the firms have
control till their tier-1 suppliers only. The pandemic has made firms to realize that
most of their suppliers depend upon China for raw materials and spare parts. For
example, the automotive industry has 80% of its supply chains to China in some way
or the other.
Here, let us discuss few supply chains for a better understanding.

11.3.1 Automotive Supply Chain

Automotive supply chains are complex networks, consisting of a large number of

components with a giant infrastructure and various stakeholders including suppliers,
dealers, governing bodies, manufacturers, employees, and customers. Every step in
the automotive supply chain is very much sensitive because of various stakeholders’
presence, large-scale investment, and infrastructure (Biswas and Gupta 2019). Auto-
motive supply chains are well defined and well-controlled through proved practices
along with IoT introduction. Because of the pandemic, car sales have reduced a lot
during the lockdown, and it is expected to rise in near future because of mandated
social distancing norms. So, the market for automotive products will be there, and
the challenge lies in managing efficient operations and supply chains.
Challenges for Automotive Supply Chains Post-COVID:
1. Stockholders are not well informed about the inventory, demand, and transaction
details.
2. Since stakeholders are not well-informed inventory obsolesces are frequent
3. Lack of informed decision making (Bai and Sarkis 2020)
4. Existing systems are not robust to data duplications, noisy data produces a lot
of inconsistent alert system and the same data is being used for mining insights
(Attaran and Gunasekaran 2019)
5. Transparency & Traceability is not maintained throughout the supply chain
(Bürer et al. 2019)
6. Limited data availability, which eventually leads to the bullwhip effect, espe-
cially in uncertain times like COVID, the effect will be more (Dolgui et al.
2020)
7. Tough to manage the large supplier base and complex chains in vulnerable times
with imposed safety norms and restrictions (Fu and Zhu 2019).

OEM’s Should Focus On:

1. Deep supply chain awareness
2. Early detection capability of vulnerabilities
132 K. R. K. Reddy and P. Kalpana

3. Risk modelling capability, efficient leverage of proven frameworks and

acronyms
4. Moving digital and adopting digital technologies.

11.3.2 Agriculture Supply Chain

Agriculture supply chains are more like fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) supply
chains in many ways but differ in terms of raw material and the final product
(Sharma et al. 2020). The raw materials are procured from fields by paying the
equivalent money to customers, and the product is processed and packed for human
or animal consumption. Agriculture supply chains include operations such as pre-
production, production, storage, processing, retail, and distribution before the final
product reaches the customer. Because of the pandemic, agriculture supply chains
were affected a lot because of enforcing lockdown and safety precautions. The mate-
rials were not procured well during these tough times, since lack of transportation and
worsening demand. In the agriculture supply chain again, there are two divisions’,
that is crops for commercial usage and for daily consumption. Pandemic created
a lot of uncertainty around agriculture supply chains, commercial needs are being
compromised due to unavailability of stocks in nearest stores, and trust and safety
restrictions became barriers for vegetables and fruits.
Challenges for Agriculture Supply Chains Post-COVID:
1. Lack of sustainability in agriculture supply chains
2. Farmers are not aware of the downstream member’s needs and market behaviour,
which creates a slack.
3. Lack of industrialisation in agriculture supply chains
4. Information asymmetry
5. Poor product traceability
6. Every node in the agriculture supply chain is not seamlessly connected or not
well informed about other nodes; this increases uncertainty in decision making.

Agriculture Supply Chain Regulators Should Focus On:

1. Understanding complex agriculture ecosystems
2. Including farmers into the ecosystem to keep them informed about the demand
and vulnerabilities
3. Focus on forecasting and new market methods
4. Introducing new market and delivery methods.

11.3.3 Healthcare Supply Chain (Cold Chains)

Cold chain denotes the series of actions and equipment used to maintain the products
within the specified temperature range from production/harvest to consumption and
11 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains … 133

it is also known as controlled temperature supply chain. The cold chain is used to
preserve and extend the shelf life of products such as confectionery, vegetables,
meat & marine products, fruits, and dairy products. Vaccine cold chain is associated
with maintenance of temperature of vaccines from point of manufacture to the end
customer. The reverse cold chain is a controlled temperature chain in the reverse
direction, that is from downstream members to upstream members, for example
blood samples collected from patients or people must be maintained in the cold
chain for effective usage. Vaccine cold chains must ensure that people have access
to the right vaccine in good condition, at the right time, in the right place. Currently,
many institutes are performing a trial for their vaccines; if a vaccine clears all stages
of testing then it will be approved for treatment. It is tough to ensure the vaccine
reaches each corner of the world. If vaccines are not in specified temperature for
more than allowable time, vaccines must undergo quality checking to ensure the
right condition, which is a tedious process.
Challenges for Cold Chains:
1. Manufacturability and mass manufacturing of vaccines within no time to meet
the demand.
2. Insufficient forecasting systems for specific diseases
3. Risk of reduced potency of vaccines administered, poor availability of
immunisation supplies (Improving cold chain systems 2020)
4. Lack of effective system for monitoring temperature in logistics and logistics
are not planned in an optimal way (Immunization supply chain and logistics
2020)
5. Not able to accommodate sudden vaccine demand changes
6. Lots of uncertainties in distributions of vaccines, when compared to the planned
distribution
7. Lack of end to end cold chain visibility in real-time
8. Lack of transparency and traceability in cold chain activities
9. Stockholders are notified about instances after their occurrence, not in near real-
time. Performing exploratory data analysis (EDA) on collected data after the
process will be equal to post-mortem analysis (Global COVID-19 information
2020)
10. Inadequate implementation monitoring systems and management (Immuniza-
tion supply chain and logistics 2020)
11. Ineffective vaccine disposal system after use or after its life
12. No practice of knowledge-based vaccine distributed system to downstream
members (Who is preparing the next generation of immunization supply chain
professionals 2020).

Regulators Should Focus On:

1. Digitising the temperature monitoring equipment and the logistics
2. Leveraging digital technologies to improve visibility, transparency, and effi-
ciency (Handbook on eVIN application for vaccine and cold chain manager
India (2016)).
134 K. R. K. Reddy and P. Kalpana

3. Reducing the uncertainty by collecting a lot of data about vaccines in every

stage and process.
4. Focusing on reverse logistics
5. Ensuring last-mile vaccine safety, since health workers carry vaccines in
portable cold chambers ensuring vaccine potential during the last mile is
essential.

11.3.4 Industry 4.0 Supply Chains

Supply chains need to be agile, after this pandemic supply chain regulators should
focus on the following:
1. Greater Customisation Through Additive Manufacturing
• Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is a booming field now, and it is
affecting traditional supply chains significantly. As many know it is the
process of making products by deposing material layer by layer. Though it
is trendy and not seen its full potential, it must reach its maximum potential
soon.
• After this pandemic cost-cutting will be a key parameter for any organisa-
tion to sustain in the respective industry. So, prototyping models with addi-
tive manufacturing will cost less than traditional techniques, whereas mass
manufacturing with 3D printing is not cost-effective.
• Additive manufacturing models can be done on as it is having shorter cycle
times.
2. End-to-End Integration of Advanced Analytics
• Through IoT and other data acquisition techniques a lot of data is being
captured about raw material, manufacturing processes, finished product,
logistics, customer usage patterns, etc.
• Data is the new oil and significantly impacts business processes, data won’t
add any value to the business processes.
• Post-COVID, industry 4.0 supply chains are essential, it uses advanced
techniques such as high-performance computing, predictive & prescriptive
analytics, and big data to mine for insights and information to stakeholders
in near real-time, which enhances the preparedness of the supply chain.
3. Visibility and Transparency for all Stakeholders
• Now, every component of the supply chain is not interconnected, and can’t
communicate information across nodes efficiently, though third parties are
there to coordinate supply chain activities, those data is also properly main-
tained, there exists a golden opportunity of creating a unique point of truth,
which enhances the informed decision making.
11 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains … 135

• Unique point of truth also enhances supply chain visibility, transparency and
traceability from the raw material to the end user.
4. A Move Beyond Postmodern ERP
• The conventional Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are rigid in
nature, and tough to achieve near real-time communication. So, organisations
must focus on building advanced IT capabilities to enhance their business
operations. Robustness, integrability, connectivity, service index, agility, and
maintenance are key for IT infrastructure.
5. Widespread Incorporation of Digitisation of Equipment
• Now most of the manufacturing facilities, logistics and other activities are
digitised using technologies like IoT, IIoT, and other data acquisition tech-
niques. Post COVID-19, the level of digitisation in an organisation will be
key for efficient operations.
• Fully digitized, and streamlined IoT infrastructure, agile operations, and IT
capabilities lead to greater supply chain visibility. IoT refers to a system of
embedded physical devices connected to a computing environment with the
help of software, which results in automatic data appending when sensors get
triggered, IoT uses the internet to communicate information to stakeholders.
6. Ubiquitous Access of the Data\Information With a Provided Authentication
• As mentioned above, agile supply chains produce a lot of data about physical
& digital assets. Also, it produces valuable insights extracted from captured
data in near real-time.
• After collecting a large amount of data, the next concern will be how to
maintain this huge data and make it available for customers without latency.
Nowadays computing power is cheaper and powerful, we can leverage cloud
and in-house servers to store the data and increase the availability of data to
customers & stakeholders.
7. Quantum Computing and Edge Computing
• Quantum & Edge computing comes up with high computing performance
and deep analysis. Quantum computing is key for specialised predictions and
recommendations. Data must be stored on more readily accessible platforms,
to utilize industry 4.0 supply chains to their fullest.
8. Distributed Ledger Technology (Blockchain):
• Blockchain is an open distributed ledger that can record transactions between
two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way (Helo and
Hao 2019). It comes up with immutability, decentralized in manner, privacy,
increased security, acquaintance, etc.
• Blockchain couples trust with the existing ecosystem to address key chal-
lenges, that is achieving visibility, transparency, and traceability, blockchain
136 K. R. K. Reddy and P. Kalpana

is a dynamic decentralized platform, it can be connected to the continuously

appending sets of data (Leng et al. 2020).
• Blockchain technology has near real-time settlement of transactions, avail-
ability with reliability, immutability as key characteristics.
• Now a days, most of the industries are actively exploring blockchain tech-
nology to transform their existing practices to make them efficient and risk
free to certain extent. Blockchain technology is opted fit for supply chain
digitisation, it has applications in healthcare, food industry, etc. The Unique
selling point (USP) of blockchain technology is to integrate the trust into
existing ecosystem (Li et al. 2019).
• Use cases of blockchain in supply chains include building coordination
between suppliers, digitising logistics, supply chain and logistics visi-
bility, coupling transparency and trust into the existing system, recalling
defect-driven products, transparent way of dealing with warranty claims,
disintermediation, etc.

11.4 Conclusion

As experts say, “Never let a good crisis go waste” and these times can be a good
time to break the silos and see how your firm can transform better to achieve new
heights. Though currently, we are living in uncertain and difficult times, the key
stakeholders should focus on strategies, frameworks and technologies with which
they excel in the near future; nobody knows when this pandemic is going to end,
but it is going to come with new challenges and opportunities that might make or
break a company. In this study we tried to concentrate on areas dealing with the
supply chain VUCAness, new challenges for SC due to the on-going pandemic,
long term impacts on SC’s due to COVID-19 pandemic, key areas for improvement,
achieving maximum possible efficiency in a new normal environment for supply
chains, SC practitioners responsibilities to ensure smooth and frictionless operations,
adopting digitalisation and emerging technologies for benefit of SC activities, dealing
with disruptions in the near future, strategies that can improve the efficiency of SC
activities post COVID-19. Here, we discussed the potential challenges for supply
chains in the post-COVID era, and discussed what the supply chain practitioners
should focus on. The essence of risk management and VUCA has been discussed
along with few supply chain networks as examples. Finally, discussed industry 4.0
supply chains and the key steps in achieving digitized supply chains.
11 Impact of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains … 137

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