From Supply Chain Risk to Systemwide Disruptions: Research Opportunities in Forecasting, Risk Management, and Product Design

Purpose: Supply chains must rebuild for resilience to respond to challenges posed by systemwide disruptions. Unlike past disruptions that were narrow in impact and short-term in duration, the Covid pandemic presented a systemic disruption and revealed shortcomings in responses. This study outlines an approach to rebuilding supply chains for resilience, integrating innovation in areas critical to supply chain management.Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on extensive debates among the authors and their peers. We focus on three areas deemed foundational to supply chain resilience: (1) forecasting, the starting point of supply chain planning, (2) the practices of supply chain risk management, and (3) product design, the starting point of supply chain design. We debated and pooled our viewpoints to outline key changes to these areas in response to systemwide disruptions, supported by a narrative literature review of the evolving research, to identify research opportunities.Findings: All three areas have evolved in response to the changed perspective on supply chain risk instigated by the pandemic and resulting in systemwide disruptions. Forecasting, or prediction generally, is evolving from statistical and time-series methods to human-augmented forecasting supplemented with visual analytics. Risk management has transitioned from enterprise to supply chain risk management to tackling systemic risk. Finally, product design principles have evolved from design-for-manufacturability to design-for-adaptability. All three approaches must work together.Originality: We outline the evolution in research directions for forecasting, risk management, and product design and present innovative research opportunities for building supply chain resilience against systemwide disruptions.