A Review on Supply Chain Disruption: Managing Risk

Abstract

Design of a flexible supply chain is a complex and challenging task. This complexity arises due to sudden and unexpected changes (natural disaster, terrorist attack, labor strike, political instability etc.) in the market structure. Therefore, supply chains designed during more stable time need to be reshaped to deal with market volatility. However, modern supply chains are longer and very complex, and recent lean practices have resulted in supply chains becoming more vulnerable. Many researchers focus on the creation of an efficient supply chain to reduce cost and provide high incentive for all supply chain members but leveraging supply chain disruption risk management as a competitive advantage is ignored. This paper presents a literature review to highlight the importance of supply chain disruptions and its consequences. The objective of this paper is to discuss various strategies proposed by various researchers to manage supply chain disruptions. This paper also suggests a general framework, based on the literature survey, to help managers to manage supply chain disruptions and create a safer supply chain.