Modelling resilience in supply chain

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Industrial

Global supply chains are vulnerable to a number of disturbances that may affect negatively company’s operational and financial performance. The company’s ability to cope with supply chain disturbances, i.e. the ability to be resilient, is vital to sustain the company and respective supply chain competitiveness. The aim of this thesis is modelling resilience in a supply chain context. More specifically, it is intended to develop an explanatory framework of the supply chain resilience phenomena and to model supply chain resilience indices to be deployed at individual company level. These indices intend to measure the companies’ ability to be resilient in a supply chain context. Using a theory building approach, a case study was conducted in seven companies’belonging to the Portuguese automotive upstream supply chain. It was found that managers do not associate supply chain disturbances to a particular type of events, but with the negative effects that events provoke. When companies experience a disturbance, its ability to deliver on-time may be compromised. The resilient practices, adopted by companies, depend on the type of supply chain disturbances and their negative effects. The main failure modes arising from the case study are “capacity shortage” and “material shortage”. Eight propositions were derived from the case study empirical findings. They were used to develop the supply chain resilience explanatory framework,to provide additional understanding regarding the relationships between supply chain disturbances, supply chain failure modes and resilient practices. To support the assessment of companies’ resilience, two resilience indices were modelled and developed. These indices intend to measure the companies’ ability to sustain its performance in terms of “on-time delivery” when a “capacity shortage” or “material shortage” occur. Finally, the indices were tested in companies belonging to the Portuguese automotive upstream supply chain. The dissertation contributes to the existing literature by empirically investigating the main effects of supply chain disturbances and how companies can increase supply chain resilience. It suggests an approach to assess companies’ resilience and identifies a set of supply chain state variables that companies may control to improve supply chain resilience.

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - (SFRH/BD/43984/2008); (Project PTDC/EME-GIN/68400/2006 and Project MIT-Pt/EDAM-IASC/0033/2008)