Conceptual model for breaking ripple effect and cycles within supply chain resilience

ABSTRACT

Business world has reached a complexity tipping point, increasing the risk of disruption consequences not to remain localised in a single company but to reverberate on the entire Supply Chain. Literature now pays great attention to studying this ripple effect, which can critically undermine resilience of the entire Supply Chain. This work further investigates ripple effect by analysing the presence of cycles among these chain reactions using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps. This methodology allows to link multidimensional and multidisciplinary concepts: by unveiling this information, managers and policymakers are provided with more details about the system behaviour. The research method exemplified uncovers the causal relationships among factors influencing Supply Chain Resilience, providing necessary insight to break or reinforce such connections. A case study of an automotive industry Supply Chain is presented to show the application of the proposed methodology into an operating context: 15 different cycles have been enumerated, explaining how connections among these factors ultimately impact Supply Chain Resilience.

KEYWORDS:

• Supply chain resilience
• fuzzy cognitive maps
• ripple effect
• automotive sector

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giulio Marcucci

Giulio Marcucci, research fellow at Università Politecnica delle Marche, holds a master’s degree in Management Engineering and a PhD in Industrial Engineering. His research activity mainly deals with Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Resilience and Ripple Effect. He is author of several papers that have been published on international journals (International Journal of Production Research, Production Planning & Control, Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal) and conference proceedings.

Giovanni Mazzuto

Giovanni Mazzuto, Researcher at the Marche Polytechnic University, graduated in 2010 in engineering of the industrial automation at the University of Ancona. His research activity mainly deals with environmental analysis of process plants and maintenance management, analysis of the behaviour of the supply chain, project management and product development. He is author of several papers that have been published on international journals (International Journal of Production Research, Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, International Journal of Business Performance and Supply Chain Modelling, International Journal for RF Technologies: Research and Applications) and conference proceedings.

Maurizio Bevilacqua

Maurizio Bevilacqua, head of the Engineering Faculty at Università Politecnica delle Marche, graduated with distinction in 1986 in mechanical engineering at the University of Ancona. His research activity mainly deals with multiphase flow transport and separation analysis, environmental analysis of process plants and maintenance management. He is author of several papers (more than 100) that have been published on national and international journals (SPE Production Engineering, Reliability Engineering & System Safety, Quality & Reliability Engineering International, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, International Journal of Logistics, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, …) and conference proceedings.

Filippo Emanuele Ciarapica

Filippo Emanuele Ciarapica, Full Professor at Università Politecnica delle Marche, graduated with distinction in 1999 in mechanical engineering at the University of Ancona. In 2003, he has got Ph.D. in Energy Management at the University of Ancona. He is author of several papers (more than 60) that have been published on national and international proceedings and journals (Safety Science, International journal of loss prevention in process industry, Quality & Reliability Engineering International, …). His research topics mainly focus on industrial plants design, development of risk assessment methodologies and development of soft computing techniques.

Luca Urciuoli

Luca Urciuoli is Associate Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Industrial Economics and Management (Stockholm, Sweden) and Research Affiliate at MIT CTL. He has a MSc degree in Industrial Engineering, from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, and a PhD from the Engineering University of Lund. In the past, he has been working at the research unit of the Volvo group as a project manager developing telematics services in the areas of transport and logistics optimisation, security, and uptime management and diagnostics. He also led the research of the Cross-border Research Association in Switzerland and collaborated in several consultancy and FP7 research projects. His research and teaching focus on topics like e-Customs, trade facilitation, supply chain security, waste and postal supply chains, risk and resilience, network design, biomass supply chains and digital supply chains.