Data-driven secure, resilient and sustainable supply chains: gaps, opportunities, and a new generalised data sharing and data monetisation framework

Abstract

The increasing exposure of global supply chains to severe disruptions such as the ones related to the COVID-19 pandemic, clearly demonstrated the need for novel data-driven risk management paradigms that monetise data from internal and external stakeholders to support supply chain security, resilience, and sustainability. We first motivate the challenges that supply chains are facing under the new realities. We then provide a critical taxonomy of the relevant literature and identify gaps which include: (i) the impact of security on supply chain operations; (ii) cost effective resiliency strategies and practices; and (iii) the social and labour dimensions of sustainability. We then propose a new generalised framework that encompasses all the identified challenges, gaps in literature and in practice, and opportunities in supply chain management research. The proposed framework is validated through a real-world case study of the organic food supply chain. This validation further highlights the need for data-driven digital technologies that enable data collection and management, secure storage and effective data processing towards data monetisation for supply chain security, cost-competitive resilience, and sustainability across end-to-end operations.

KEYWORDS:

• supply chain resilience
• sustainability
• security
• data sharing and monetisation
• artificial intelligence
• blockchain

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research of one of the authors (Dr. Naoum Tsolakis) has received funding from the Knowledge & Innovation Community (KIC) on Food of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the EU (Activity 19041).

Notes on contributors

Dimitrios Bechtsis

Dr. Dimitrios Bechtsis is Assistant Professor at the Industrial Engineering and Management Department, International Hellenic University, Thessaloniki Greece, at the area of digital technologies for supply chain management. His research interests include information systems, industrial information systems, autonomous systems, digital supply chain design and simulation techniques and digital transformation while he is focusing on the incorporation of autonomous systems into the digital supply chain ecosystem. He has conducted research activities in the fields of autonomous systems and supply chain management, and he has participated in numerous researchprojects.

Naoum Tsolakis

Dr. Naoum Tsolakis is a Research Associate in Industrial Systems and Network Analysis at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, where he focusses on the design, analysis, and management of multi-level operations in sustainable supply network systems. His main research and practice interests include the areas of simulation modelling and optimisation of end-to-end supply chain operations, enabled by digital technologies, to assess emerging configurational designs for the efficient management of industrial manufacturing networks. Naoum holds a 5-year Engineering Diploma (top graduate for the Academic Year 2005–2006) and a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering, along with four Masters degrees in the engineering and business management domains.

Eleftherios Iakovou

Prof. Eleftherios Iakovou is the Harvey Hubbell Professor of Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University and the Director of Manufacturing and Logistics Innovation Initiatives at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station. He serves as the Director of Supply Chain Management for the SecureAmerica Institute at Texas A&M, a national consortium of industry and academia focusing on Resilient and Secure Manufacturing Supply Chains for the U.S. He is also the Associate Director for Supply Chain Management and Applied Operations Research at the Texas A&M Center of Applied Technology. He further has Courtesy Appointments as a Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics and Public Policy at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, where he serves as Co-Director of the Global Value Chains Program, and at the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M. His research interests include: supply chain management, global logistics and trade facilitation, green logistics and sustainable supply chains, resilient supply chains, port management, intermodal and maritime logistics, manufacturing logistics and production systems, humanitarian logistics, blockchain, supply chains for pandemics, disaster preparedness & response, illicit supply chains, strategy development and policy-making. He is the Associate Editor for the Americas for the Maritime Economics & Logistics (MEL) journal, and an Editorial Board Member for the International Journal of Logistics Economics and Globalization (IJLEG).

Dimitrios Vlachos

Prof. Dimitrios Vlachos is the Director of the Laboratory of Statistics and Quantitative Analysis Methods, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He conducts research in the fields of supply chain management, logistics, applied operational research, digital transformation, and strategy development. He has participated in more than 65 research projects (in 15 of them as a principal investigator) in the field of Supply Chain Management, and he has co-authored the respective technical reports. He has published more than 200 papers in scientific journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. He has participated as a consultant or expert in numerous projects funded by public and private organisations. He is President of the Greek Association of Supply Chain Management.