Abstract:
Resilience has emerged as a key supply chain management topic. Modern supply chains are more complex and larger in scale, due to global sourcing. With climate change, natural disasters tend to occur more frequently and severely. Under this environment, supply chains are more and more vulnerable to disruptions, especially in areas susceptible to natural disasters. The cost of not being able to manage a supply chain to efficiently return to its normal operation stages after a disaster can be quite significant. Without a sufficient awareness of resilience, local-scale disruption effects can potentially lead to regional and global supply shortages of parts and raw materials, as in the case of Thailands damaging floods in 2011. Following the floods, government and industrial sectors have focused on developing more resilient infrastructure and management systems, to cope with future flooding. Yet, important gaps in research and practice on disaster resilience involve the need for a much better understanding of disaster characteristics and impacts and their links to supply chain vulnerabilities and capabilities. Disasters are distinct, in terms of the scale of events, probability of occurrence, onset and duration of impact, etc. The current focus of resilience development, in response to each type of disaster, is very limited. Additionally, difficulties with resilient supply chain management are the lack of quantitative assessment of vulnerability and capability factors. This research contributes to the existing literature on resilient supply chain management by developing a factor framework for supply chain resilience assessment, with a focus on flood disasters. The distinctive characteristics of flood disasters are considered in the context of a resilience triangle, to identify relevant vulnerability and capability factors. The links between the factors and supply chain performance loss are discussed.
Thammasat University. Thammasat University Library