Helena Carvalho

Logistics performance can be affected by the presence of uncertainties in the decision making process. To reduce decision making uncertainties, a topology of sources of supply chain ({SC)} uncertainty is proposed, in order to identify different types of uncertainty. A conceptual framework is developed for the analysis of decision making uncertainty sources in {SC’s}, providing the basis for the design and selection of improved {SC} scenarios. A case study is presented to illustrate the potential of simulation techniques in modeling scenarios for the Supply Chain: a set of performance measures is proposed, and results are obtained based on a predetermined selection criterion.

This paper proposes a composite index, called the AR Index, to assess the agility and resilience of automotive companies and their respective supply chains. As a first step, a model to support the AR Index is developed. Next, an AR Index for the automotive supply chain is suggested using a set of relevant Agile and Resilient supply chain practices. The Delphi technique was used to obtain a series of weights for those practices. Finally a case study approach is used to illustrate the application of the AR Index. This study represents an original approach that suggests a unique composite indicator for the Agile and Resilient paradigms in the context of automotive supply chains

Supply chains (SCs) may experience instability induced by disturbances such as extreme climate conditions or accidents. These events can cause severe negative effects on SCs, jeopardising the on-time delivery of products and services to customers. This paper proposes a mapping framework to improve SC resilience to such events, avoiding possible failure modes. The proposed mapping framework allows identification of the current SC operation and possible transition states, together with points of vulnerability. An illustrative example of the framework applied to a real-life wine SC is presented.

As organizações são concebidas com o enfoque principal na eficiência. As práticas de gestão que adoptam pressupõem, regra geral, a estabilidade do ambiente onde estão inseridas. Por isso, as organizações ficam vulneráveis aos distúrbios a que são sujeitas, e cuja frequência é cada vez maior, o que condiciona a sua eficiência, o seu nível de produtividade e, consequentemente, a sua competitividade. Porque existe uma relação de interdependência mais ou menos definida entre as organizações, a ocorrência de um distúrbio numa delas pode afectar todas as que dela dependem. É, por isso, fundamental que as organizações sejam mais resilientes, isto é, sejam capazes de reagir a um distúrbio inesperado, regressando rapidamente ao estado original ou a um melhor, após a cessação do distúrbio. Neste sentido, uma das acções que pode ser tomada é a definição de planos de mitigação e/ou de contingência. A adequação de planos, de mitigação e/ou de contingência, a implementar quando uma organização está perante um distúrbio, sendo por natureza uma actividade pró-activa, pressupõe a identificação dos distúrbios a que a organização pode ficar sujeita. Atendendo a que os distúrbios podem ter características muito diferentes, no que concerne à frequência de ocorrência, efeito crítico, nível de previsibilidade, área afectada na organização e duração, e podem, ainda, ter origem em fontes diversas, internas ou externas à organização produzidas pelo Homem ou pela Natureza, é fundamental que existam modelos que permitam a sua caracterização e a quantificação do grau de severidade das suas consequências para a organização onde incidem. É possível identificar na bibliografia modelos cujo desenvolvimento está associado aos distúrbios. Contudo, o âmbito em que são desenvolvidos é muito diverso. Nenhum deles, porém, permite caracterizar os distúrbios. O principal objectivo deste artigo é apresentar um modelo conceptual que permita caracterizar os distúrbios e avaliar a severidade dos seus efeitos para a organização onde incidem.

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Supply chains are facing numerous changes that are contributing to increasing their complexity and vulnerability to disturbances, therefore, to survive, supply chains must be resilient. The paper presents a supply chain simulation study for a real case concerned with the Portuguese automotive supply chain. The subset automotive supply chain involved in the case study is a three-echelon supply chain, composed by one automaker, two 1st-tier suppliers, two 2nd-tier suppliers, and one outsource entity. The purpose of the study is to evaluate alternative supply chain scenarios for improving supply chain resilience to a disturbance and understanding how mitigation strategies affect each supply chain entity performance. Two strategies widely used to mitigate disturbance negative effects on supply chains were considered and six scenarios were designed. The scenarios differ in terms of presence or absence of a disturbance in one hand and presence or absence of a mitigation strategy in other hand. To evaluate the scenarios designed, two performance measures were defined per supply chain entity, Lead Time Ratio and Total Cost.

This paper explores the designing principles to create resilient Supply Chains ({SC)} with the ability to return, rapidly, to the initial stage or to an improved one after a disturbance occurrence. Supply chain disturbances and failure modes are identified and discussed. The concept of resilience applied to {SCs} is defined and explored; a conceptual {SC} Resilience Index and a {SC} Resilience Indicator are proposed. A framework for the design of resilient supply chains is introduced, identifying main {SC} characteristic that can be modified to increase {SC} resilience and to mitigate its inherent vulnerability. An exploratory simulation study is presented to test the design of alternative {SC} scenarios.

Supply chain management ({SCM)} is crucial for increasing organisational effectiveness, enhancing competitiveness, customer service and profitability. Actually, the lean and green philosophies have been adopted in the {SCM} context, but nearly always separately and with little understanding of their influence on supply chain performance. Accordingly, this paper intends to propose a conceptual model that explores the relationships between lean and green practices and supply chain performance. A set of lean and green {SCM} practices and a performance measurement system are suggested. The proposed performance measures intend to evaluate the practices influence on operational, economic and environmental supply chain's performance.

Purpose –This paper aims to propose a resilience index to assess the company ability to avoid and minimize the negative effects of supply chain disturbances.
Design/methodology/approach – An inductive research approach was used to develop a resilience assessment model. In a first stage, to collect empirical data, an exploratory case study was performed in seven companies’ belong to different positions in the Portuguese automotive supply chain. Next, a resilience index was derived from the case study main findings. In a final stage, the index was then tested using a case study approach in the automotive supply chain.
Findings – It was found that managers do not associate supply chain disturbances to a particular type of events, but with the negative effects that events provoke. The results also suggest that the resilience strategies they used are dependent on the type of supply chain disturbances negative effects. These empirical findings were used to develop a supply chain resilience assessment model and two resilience indexes: resilience index of “on time delivery” to “capacity shortage” and resilience index of “on time delivery” to “materials shortage”.
Research limitations/implications – This paper has the limitations common to all case studies, such as the subjectivity of the analysis and results generalization. Since only the automotive sector was studied, the findings are not universally applicable across different industry sectors in various countries.
Originality/value – The study contributes to the existing literature by empirically investigating the main effects of supply chain disturbances and how companies can increase supply chain resilience. It also suggests a way to evaluate companies’ resilience after a disturbance occurrence and identifies a set of supply chain state variables to improve supply chain resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to establish links between supply chain disturbances and corresponding strategies of resilience to counter them. To this end, an inductive research approach is used, examining a sample of 38 cases. Secondary data from the cases is used to identify disturbances which affected the corresponding supply chains and the resilience strategies used by managers. The empirical evidences shows that the negative effects of supply chain disturbances can be categorised into a number of supply chain failure modes. In addition, a set of resilience strategies was identified that could be used to overcome those failure modes. A conceptual model, with links between supply chain disturbances, failures and resilience strategies, is proposed. The limitations of this research result from the use of secondary data sources. The findings are only valid for the selected case studies and, consequently, may not be applicable in other scenarios. Future research should focus on detailed case studies that investigate cross-functional applications across the organisation and the supply chain.

This paper aims to propose a supply chain resilience assessment framework. An inductive research approach was used being performed an exploratory case study in the Portuguese automotive supply chain. The study investigates the main effects of supply chain disturbance and how companies can increase supply chain resilience. Empirical findings were used to develop a resilience assessment model with two perspectives, an “ex post” analysis, where it measures the performance loss after a disturbance occurrence, and in an “ex ante” analysis, measuring the characteristics that confer resilience properties to the supply chain.

In a global market, companies must deal with a high rate of changes in business environment. Most manufacturing systems fail to sustain productivity when process disturbances occur. Therefore, it is necessary to create resilient production systems with the ability to return, rapidly, to the initial stage or to an improved one. The parameters, variables and restrictions of the production system are inherently vagueness. This situation suggests that there are dependencies between relevant variables which are not possible to know with precision. The fuzzy logic theory has the ability to describe, in a quantitative and qualitative way, problems that involve vagueness and imprecision. This paper provides an overview for the use of fuzzy logic to establish resilient production systems. Fuzzy concepts are reviewed, in particular its applications to production systems, trying to classify related fuzzy parameters and vari-ables. In addition, the concept of resilient systems are reviewed and extended to production. Finally, it is proposed an approach to establish resilient production systems using the fuzzy set theory

Supply chain management must adopt different and more innovative strategies that support a better response to customer needs in an uncertain environment. Supply chains must be more agile and be more capable of coping with disturbances, meaning that supply chains must be more resilient. The simultaneous deployment of agile and resilient approaches will enhance supply chain performance and competitiveness. Accordingly, the main objective of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for the analysis of relationships between agile and resilient approaches, supply chain competitiveness and performance. Operational and economic performance measures are proposed to facilitate the monitoring of the influence of these practices on supply chain performance. The influence of the proposed agile and resilient practices on supply chain competitiveness is also examined in terms of time to market, product quality and customer service.

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the divergences and commitments between the lean, agile, resilient and green paradigms while investigating the effect of paradigms' practices within supply chain attributes.
Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual model with lean, agile, resilient and green practices and supply chain management attributes is proposed. Causal diagrams were used to represent the relationships between paradigm practices and supply chain attributes. The four diagrams were aggregated to build the conceptual model.
Findings – The conceptual model allows for the identification of synergies and divergences resulting from the paradigms practices implementation. The synergies between paradigms are related to “information frequency” and “integration level” increasing as well as reduction of “production lead time” and “transportation lead time”. However, other supply chain attributes such as “capacity surplus”, “inventory level” and “replenishment frequency” are affected in opposite directions by some paradigms creating divergences.
Research limitations/implications – The model relationships were established using an anecdotal approach derived from the literature review, reflecting only a partial view of supply chain dynamics. More research related to other supply chain attributes and/or paradigm practices, and validation of the proposed relationships is suggested.
Practical implications – The proposed model can be the basis for further research in lean, agile, resilient and green paradigms, contributing to a more sustainable and competitive lean supply chain with the necessary agility toward a quick response, resiliency to disruptions, and harmonization with the ecologic and environmental aspects. Originality/value – To the authors' knowledge this paper is the first to provide an understanding about the tradeoffs among lean, agile, resilient and green supply chain paradigms.

This paper proposes a model for management of supply chain resilience. To this end the structured content analysis of media news is used to analyze a sample constituted by sixty two documents containing evidences of seventy seven companies that were affected by the Japan 2011 earthquake. The sample provides evidences that companies failed to sustain their operations mainly because capacity shortages and material shortages. Also provides empirical evidence of twelve resilience practices to reduce the disturbance severity and the recovery time. Based on these findings four propositions were made and aggregated to propose a model for supply chain resilience management.