Modelling supply chain adaptation for disruptions: An empirically grounded complex adaptive systems approach

Abstract

Through the development and usage of an agent‐based model, this article investigates firms' adaptive strategies against disruptions in a supply chain network. Viewing supply chain networks as complex adaptive systems, we first construct and analyze a real‐world supply chain network among 2,971 firms spanning 90 industry sectors. We then develop an agent‐based simulation to show how the model of firms' adaptive behaviors can leverage competition relationships within a supply chain network. The simulation also models how disruptions propagate in the supply chain network through cascading failures. With the simulation, we seek to understand if a firm's adaptive behaviors can reduce the impact of disruptions in supply chain networks. Therefore, we propose, evaluate, and analyze two types of adaptive strategies a firm can leverage to reduce the negative effects of supply chain network disruptions. First, we deploy in our model a reactive strategy, which restructures the network in response to a disruption event among first‐tier suppliers. Next, we develop and propose proactive strategies, which are used when a distant disruption is observed but has not yet hit the focal firm. We discuss the implications related to how and when firms can improve their resilience against supply disruptions by leveraging adaptive strategies.

Viability of intertwined supply networks: extending the supply chain resilience angles towards survivability. A position paper motivated by COVID-19 outbreak

“…Demirel et al (2019) point to stability as a 'basic desirable property of a supply network without an explicit consideration of performance' while the robustness and resilience explicitly include the performance in the analysis of disruption impacts. Ivanov and Sokolov (2013) show that robustness allows to analyse the system ability to withstand a disruption (or a series of disruptions) without any structural and parametrical changes/adaptations, while resilience analysis explicitly allows the system to employ some recovery/adaptation in order to restore the disrupted operations and performance (Craighead et al 2007;Zhao, Zuo, and Blackhurst 2019).…”

“…complex supply networks with dynamically changing structures, roles and behaviours of the firms involved. For example, Zhao, Zuo, and Blackhurst (2019) show that a competitor of a focal firm can also serve as the focal firm's upstream supplier echoed by Niu et al (2019) who consider a co-opetition SC setting on the example of Apple and Samsung with a competitive supplier (i.e. frenemy) that plays the role of both supplier and competing focal firm in two different but intersecting SCs simultaneously causing dependence asymmetry (Dong et al 2015).…”

Reconfigurable supply chain: the X-network

“…Ivanov (2020) shows that differently than the traditional, linearly directed SCs with static structures, the firms in value webs may exhibit multiple behaviors by changing the buyer-supplier roles in interconnected or even competing SCs and causing dependence asymmetry (Dong et al 2015). For example, a competitor of a focal firm can also serve as the focal firm's upstream supplier playing the role of both supplier and competing focal firm in two different but intersecting SCs simultaneously as discussed in Zhao et al (2019). Fracassia et al (2017) point to the multiple, intersecting SCs in the industrial symbiosis that are characterized by using the waste of some SC processes as the inputs into the other SCs.…”

Insights on Multi-Agent Systems Applications for Supply Chain Management

“…As a direct consequence of the globalization and the interconnection of SCN nodes, they became less resilient to unexpected disruptions, and a failure in one SCN entity can potentially cascade across the whole network. Several authors have investigated this phenomenon in order to determine what factors make SCNs resilient and to propose mitigation strategies (see, e.g., [99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106]).…”