Methods for mitigating disruptions in complex supply chain structures: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Supply chain risk management is extremely important for the success of a company. Due to the increasing complexity of supply chains, avoiding and mitigating the effects of disruptions is very challenging. This article presents the results of a systematic literature review and content analysis in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the methods that are currently used for mitigating supply chain disruptions. The results of the review indicate that research in this field is interdisciplinary and that no common modelling language has emerged thus far. Prior research mostly redraws to graph theory and/or social network analysis, although a few methods have been developed recently specifically for supply chain risk management. We observe that prior contributions addressed risk and structure mostly separately and that only a few works focused on their intersection. The results of this review are consolidated in a research agenda that calls for research on the risk-structure-interface and the development of proxy methods.

Keywords:

• supply chain
• risk management
• supply chain disruption
• systematic literature review
• network theory
• resilience
• network structure

ORCID

Tobias Bier http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0512-200X

Anne Lange http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6801-9515

Christoph H. Glock http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6006-0070