TITLE:
Global Supply Chains in the Post-Pandemic
AUTHORS:
Fernando Acabado Romana, Carlos Guillen Gestoso, Silvia Gonzalez Fernandez
KEYWORDS:
Logistics, Supply Chain, Crisis, Technology, Risks, Portuguese
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Industrial and Business Management,
Vol.13 No.7,
July
17,
2023
ABSTRACT: The world has experienced,
from 2020 to the present, a widespread impact arising from a pandemic crisis,
which forced supply chains to be limited or even suspended, generating
important constraints from producers to sale points. This situation created
challenges for organizations and consumers who were forced to look for
solutions to satisfy their production and consumption needs. The importance of
this topic is related to the need to avoid stock ruptures in supply chains such
as those that happened with certain food products in 2020 and 2021, which was
reflected in shortages of some products and inflation. The contribution in this
work resided in, through scientific methodology,
identifying and prioritizing the most relevant preventive measures that
allow responding to crisis situations such as the one that occurred with the
pandemic since 2020, or the one that takes place in 2022 with a shortage of
materials and high inflation. Thus, managers who work with supply chains and
logistics are given a portfolio of solutions to adopt with a certain level of
priority. We were able to reasonably conclude that only a part of Portuguese
companies are technologically prepared to respond to the new challenges of
supply chains, since the incorporation of computer systems and integrators is
far from being a majority of the mentioned universe. A minority of the
organizations surveyed have prevention mechanisms in the management of supply
chains, since the number of organizations that have, for example, risk and
contingency manuals, sales forecasting software, or even simulation of the
impact of disruptions in supply chain, is significantly reduced. Given the
results obtained, and in hierarchical order of importance, the TOP 3 measures
considered most appropriate to prevent stock outs in the event of disruptions
in the supply chain in the food sector in Portugal are: to prepare contingency
and risk plans; diversify suppliers (Dual Sourcing); and preventive risk budget
(cap in case of crisis).