New metrics for measuring supply chain reconfigurability

Abstract

The COVID 19 pandemic, fluctuating demand, market uncertainty and the emergence of new technologies explain the need for a more flexible and agile supply chain. In fact, several important factors should be taken into account in the process of building an adaptive and reconfigurable supply chain. Reconfigurability is used to measure quantitatively the capability of supply chain to change easily their structure and functions. The aim of this work is to evaluate the level of reconfigurability of a supply chain. Quantitative measures of six indicators that characterize reconfigurability are presented in this paper. Then, an index of reconfigurability in supply chain is developed based on The Multi-Attribute Utility Theory in order to choose the most reconfigurable configuration. An illustrative example is also given. From the discussion, it is deduced that the characteristics of the reconfigurable supply chain impacts positively on the degree of reconfigurability.

Antecedents and enablers of supply chain reconfigurability and its effect on performance

“…At a higher level, reconfigurability can be applied at the supply chain level. It is defined as the ability of supply chain to change its structure and its functions to cope with disruption and market changes [20]. Indeed, the guarantee of reconfigurability is mainly due to its six characteristics that allow to reduce the reconfiguration effort.…”

“…Indeed, the guarantee of reconfigurability is mainly due to its six characteristics that allow to reduce the reconfiguration effort. [19,20]consider that these characteristics allow to judge and evaluate the capacity of the supply chain to adapt with the new requirements. Therefore, it is necessary to study the analogy between the characteristics at RMS level and those at RSC level.…”

“…These characteristics result in a truly-reconfigurable supply chain [18]. Hence, it is necessary to assess the degree of reconfigurability through its characteristics to determine if the supply chain can easily and quickly change its structure and functions to cope with disruptions [19,20]. Several indicators have been proposed to measure reconfigurability for machine, cell and system reconfiguration.…”

Antecedents and enablers of supply chain reconfigurability and their effects on performance

“…These characteristics result in a truly reconfigurable supply chain [ 18 ]. Hence, it is necessary to assess the degree of reconfigurability through its characteristics to determine if the supply chain can easily and quickly change its structure and functions to cope with disruptions [ 19 , 20 ]. Several indicators have been proposed to measure reconfigurability for machine, cell, and system reconfiguration.…”

“…In [ 19 ], we proposed six metrics to measure the degree of reconfigurability by considering modularity, integrability, convertibility, diagnosability, scalability, and customization as key indicators of reconfigurability. In order to provide managers and decision-makers with a tool to quantitatively and objectively evaluate supply chain reconfigurability, while dealing with information uncertainty in the supply chain, [ 20 ] proposed a reconfigurability evaluation approach based on the six metrics using fuzzy logic.…”