Supply chain resilience for global operations (1) : a rethink for a new paradigm

• Main Author: Leong, Jody
• Other Authors: Teo Chee Chong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Business::Operations management::Supply chain management; Engineering::Maritime studies
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/150007
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The Covid-19 crisis has rigorously tested the supply chain management capabilities of grocery stores. Swift response practices proved to be more valuable than ever before, as grocery retailers faced sudden, unanticipated, and simultaneous shocks on both demand and supply sides. At the same time, the virus posed a threat to inventory capabilities when new bottlenecks emerged as consumers switched to online shopping and home delivery. Under these circumstances, maintaining good delivery capacity and ensuring food availability to consumers called for fast and effective changes to business frameworks and coordinated adaptations of supply chain practices. This research thus aims to assess the resilience of grocery supply chains in response to the coronavirus. To achieve this, we evaluated secondary data associated with changes to the supply chain management and conducted interviews with industry-related individuals to support our findings and analysis. Report findings have highlighted that, despite the challenges, many grocery supply chains were able to cope fairly well with the shocks and maintain good performance throughout the crisis. However, the large scale and high level of impact of Covid-19 nonetheless acted as a catalyst for grocery retailers to transform their supply chains. The shift in supply chain management mainly focused on enabling a more responsive supply chain through agile planning and adjusting to online retailing. While the role of supply chain players has always been significant, much of the emphasis was directed at governments' efforts in maintaining the operations of a "new normal". At the end of the report, proposed strategies were evaluated and recommended for grocery business to strengthen their resilience in view of future extreme disruptions.