Supply chains have become more complex in the global economy, which has made supply chain disruptions inevitable. Disruptions can cause loss of profitability and hinder business growth. The goal of this multiple case study was to explore strategies to mitigate the effects of disruption in grocery store supply chains. The conceptual framework for this study was the resource dependency theory, which stipulates that firms rely on other businesses in the external environment for critical resources to create a competitive edge. Four purposively selected participants from 4 grocery store businesses in Northwest Arkansas participated in semistructured interviews and provided organizational documentation for this study. The participants were supply chain managers who had knowledge about disruptions and had successfully mitigated disruptions in their grocery stores' supply chains. Yin's 5-step process was used to analyze data, which involved compiling the database, disassembling data, reassembling data, interpreting data, and making a conclusion. Four themes emerged from the data analysis: supply chain partners' collaboration, multiple supply base and supplier qualification, inventory management, and information technology and communication. The uninterrupted flow of grocery merchandise to the community could result in a positive social change by helping to ensure that community members have timely access to food.

Modern supply chains are often characterized by carefully planned and interconnected processes that seamlessly integrate with each other. Supply chains are often efficientduring a stable business environment but are highly vulnerable to risks and disruptions.When any link in the supply chain is negatively impacted, challenges can arise for all the companies in the supply chain. This has expanded the goal of supply chain management tocreate resilient supply chains that incorporate event readiness, provide efficient and effective responses, and can return to their original state after a disruption. During Covid19 businesses all over the world were affected and the pandemic led to disruptions in supply chains. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) were especially affected because of lack in financial resources, technical capabilities, and low resilience. SMEs play a crucial role in the global economy but there is still a limited amount of research onhow SME can achieve resilience in their supply chains. Furthermore, there is a lack ofresearch comparing changes in supply chain resilience before and after Covid-19. To address this research gap, the purpose of the study is to explore how Covid-19 affected the supply chain resilience in Swedish SMEs. To understand the effects of Covid-19 we will examine supply chain resilience in SMEs before, during and after the pandemic. To address our purpose, we have conducted a qualitative study using an inductive approach and exploratory research design. We collected primary data from semi-structuredinterviews with nine managers from manufacturing Swedish SMEs. The data gathered through the interviews was analysed by using a thematic analysis that led us to our findings. Our findings revealed that prior to the pandemic, risk awareness was not a top priority for the respondent companies. However, Covid-19 exposed vulnerabilities in their supply chains highlighting the importance of both proactive and reactive strategies. Swedish SMEs experienced various challenges including transportation problems, component shortages and fluctuations in customer demand. Tomeet these challenges, the companies showed flexibility by changes in product assemblingand increased inventory levels during Covid-19. Furthermore, strengthened communication with suppliers and customers played a significant role in increasing supply chain visibility and collaboration. As a result of the Covid-19 disruption, our study show that the responding companies have become more aware of risks and incorporated practices into in their operations as adoption of alternative suppliers, optimization of safety stocks and improved communication. Overall, the findings suggested that the pandemic prompted the respondent SMEs to strengthen their supply chain resilience. By learning from the impact of the crisis, these companies have become more resilient and created supply chains that can better withstand future disruptions. This study contributes to understanding how supply chain resilience in Swedish SMEs was affected by Covid-19 and how SMEs can enhance their supply chain resilience

In today's dynamic business landscape, companies are constantly exposed to a multitude of challenges and uncertainties that can significantly impact their operations and performance. Inflation, a worldwide pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and rising costs are just a few of the disruptive events that have occurred during the last few years. This thesis investigates the effects of inflation and uncertainties on companies operating in the furniture industry. This thesis adopts a qualitative research approach as its methodological foundation. A comprehensive review of relevant literature and studies pertaining to the subject matter is conducted. To supplement the theoretical insights, empirical data is collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with five company cases. The data collected from these interviews serves as the basis for the development of three key themes: Macroeconomics, export, and crisis management. These themes are consistently woven throughout the thesis, providing a coherent narrative for the reader. This thesis concludes that in times of uncertainties, global furniture export companies have diversified suppliers and markets, managed resources effectively, implemented proactive risk management, and cultivated strong relationships. Prioritizing crisis management, monitoring macroeconomic factors, and optimizing strategic resources have all been key for enhancing resilience and competitiveness in this industry and allows the industry to grow and advance, as in the face of adversity it becomes evident that in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Background: COVID-19 pandemic had a vast and significant impact on today’s societies, in terms of economic, societal, and even environmental aspects. Global supply chains had to adapt to this changing landscape rapidly. Both supply and demand witnessed repercussions. The effects of COVID-19 on supply chains have been evident, with lockdowns and inconsistent supply and demand causing issues for international trade. Indeed, many companies were constrained to stop supply and production and could not deliver their goods.   Purpose: This study aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on transportation operations in logistics companies, more precisely by using the case of DHL to emphasize our study. The purpose is to analyze the impacts that the crisis had on Logistics operations, by focusing on DHL and the way the company was impacted, understood and overcame the disruption. This study will take into consideration economic, social and environmental aspects.   Method: The research will be based on a case study and empirical evidence to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on DHL’s supply chain operations and more precisely on logistics and transport. We used the Triple Bottom Line approach to measure the economic, social, and environmental performances of DHL. Further, the analysis used in this paper is an inductive thematic analysis, to emphasize the findings and provide a better accuracy to our results.   Results: The study aims to identify the effects that COVID-19 had on logistics operations, and it more particularly seeks to highlight the strategies used by logistics companies that could be useful for other companies that need to build more resilient and flexible supply chains in the face of future disruptions. The findings of this thesis will be valuable to businesses, supply chain managers, and policymakers seeking to understand the role of improving their supply chains. Thanks to the interviews that were conducted, the findings highlighted several strategies that have been implemented by companies, such as the acceleration in automation, efforts put towards employee conditions, and restructuring companies.

Yes / Purpose - The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruptions to global supply chains (SCs), affecting the production, distribution, and transportation of goods and ser- vices. To mitigate these disruptions, it is essential to identify the barriers that have im- peded the seamless operation of SCs. This study identifies these barriers and assesses their impact on supply chain network (SCN). Design/methodology/approach - To determine the relative importance of different bar- riers and rank the affected industries, a hybrid approach was employed, combining the best-worst method (BWM) and the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS). To accommodate the inherent uncertainties associated with the pan- demic, a triangular fuzzy TOPSIS was used to represent the linguistic variable ratings provided by decision-makers. Findings - The study found that the airlines and hospitality industry was the most affected by the barriers, accounting for 46% of the total, followed by the healthcare industry (23%), the manufacturing industry (19%), and finally the consumer and retail industry (17%). Research limitation/implications - This study is limited to the four critical industries and nine identified barriers. Other industries and barriers may have different weights and rankings. Nevertheless, the findings offer valuable insights for decision-makers in SC management, aiding them in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on their operations and enhancing their resilience against future disruptions. Originality/value - This study enhances our understanding of COVID-19’s impact on SCN and provides a framework for assessing disruptions using multi-criteria decision-making processes. The hybrid approach of BWM and TOPSIS in a fuzzy environment is unique and offers potential applicability in various evaluation contexts.

Implementing strategies and polices and maintain standards are essential to improving supply chain systems. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies miniconvenience store managers used to mitigate supply chain disruptions to sustain productivity and increase profits. The population was 4 managers of miniconvenience stores within gas stations located in the southeastern region of the United States who successfully maintained productivity during a supply chain disruption. The conceptual framework for this study was resource dependency theory. Data were collected using company documents, face-to-face interviews and semistructured, open-ended questions. Two themes were identified from the data analysis: building relationships and effective communication. The findings from this study could contribute to positive social change by providing miniconvenience store managers with strategies to increase supply chain capabilities while reducing the impact disruptions have on business performance, customer satisfaction, and profitability. Store managers who minimize supply chain disruptions might improve organizational operative purchasing, decrease prices, increase customer gratification, and improve the standard of living for customers in the communities served.

The dairy business is vulnerable to supply chain disruptions since large safety stocks to cover up losses are not always a viable option, therefore it is crucial to maintain a smooth supply chain to ensure stable delivery accuracies. Disruptions are unpredictable and hard to avoid in the supply chain, especially in cases where production errors cause lost production volume. This thesis proposes the use of machine learning and statistical modelling together with data from Arla to predict when a shortage will occur and its duration to allow proactive decision making to mitigate the consequences of the disruption. The aim of this thesis is to create one predictive model for delay and one for duration based on data from multiple products and explore how the features and methods used can capture the product specific characteristics in the data and thereupon improve the models. The model used for evaluating these factors was a random forest classifier, and permutation feature importance was used to determine the relevant features for the models. The issue of having imbalanced data was handled by first grouping the data and then applying the oversampling method SMOTE. The two models were trained on different datasets where the duration model was trained on all disruptions and the delay model was only trained on a subset were a shortage have occurred. One finding was that applying SMOTE yielded the best results. The best duration model had an accuracy of 62% with precision and recall of 79% and 76% respectively for the majority class, but very low for the other classes with a combined average of 21% and 24%. The most important feature for the duration was the the quotient describing the lost production. The best delay model had an accuracy of 62% with more accurate predictions over all classes and an average precision and recall of 59% and 57%. The most important feature for the delay was how often a product is produced. / Mejeribranschen är sårbar för störningar i försörjningskedjan eftersom stora säkerhetslager för att täcka förluster inte alltid är ett genomförbart alternativ, därför är det avgörande att upprätthålla en smidig försörjningskedja för att säkerställa stabila leveransnivåer. Störningar är oförutsägbara och svåra att undvika i en försörjningskedja, särskilt i de fall där produktionsfel orsakar minskad produktionsvolym. Denna uppsats föreslår användning av maskininlärning och statistisk modellering tillsammans med data från Arla för att prediktera när en brist kommer att uppstå i förhållande till störningen samt bristens varaktighet för att möjliggöra proaktiva beslut som förmildrar konsekvenserna av störningen. Målet med denna uppsats är att skapa en prediktiv modell för fördröjning och en för varaktighet baserad på data från flera produkter och undersöka hur de variabler och metoder som användes kan fånga produktspecifika egenskaper i data och därav förbättra modellen. Modellen som användes för att utvärdera dessa faktorer var en random forest klassificerare, och permutation feature importance användes för att utvärdera de använda variablerna för modellerna. Obalanserad data hanterades genom att först gruppera datan och sedan tillämpa översamplingsmetoden SMOTE. De två modellerna tränades på olika data där varaktighetsmodellen tränades på alla störningar och fördröjningsmodellen endast tränades på de fall där en brist uppstått. En slutsats var att tillämpning av SMOTE gav de bästa resultaten. Den bästa varaktighetsmodellen hade en noggrannhet på 62% med precision och recall på 79% respektive 76% för majoritetsklassen men mycket lägre för de andra klasserna med en genomsnittlig precision och recall på 21% och 24%. Den viktigaste variabeln för varaktigheten var kvoten som beskriver den förlorade produktionen. Den bästa fördröjningsmodellen hade en noggrannhet på 62% med stabilare prediktioner över alla klasser och en genomsnittlig precision och recall på 59% och 57%. Den viktigaste variabeln för fördröjningen var hur ofta en produkt produceras.

No description available.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:50:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 6417.pdf: 3427896 bytes, checksum: eb2bc6774c0f88b25959c63a85b754ac (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-10-30 / Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos / Achieving resilience along the supply chain in today's turbulent business environment requires efforts from both internal and external elements of the company. Because Procurement is currently considered a boundary spanning function, it has become a primary facilitator in helping to create supply chain resilience. The purpose of this study is therefore to understand the role of Procurement in managing the intra- and inter-organisational issues needed to create supply chain resilience. To do so, a literature review was developed by following the systematic literature review method in which intra- and inter-organisational issues that could impact supply chain resilience were identified. These issues were grouped into eight general topics: knowledge acquired, inventory, product and technology for intraorganisational issues; and strategic sourcing, supply chain design, transportation and risk for inter-organisational issues. Dynamic capability (DC) view was also reviewed to offer a deeper analysis and fresh perspective on the empirical results. A multiple case study was conducted in four focal companies from different sectors, including two key suppliers from each one. After all interviews were transcribed, the data was added to the QDA Miner software in order to conduct a content analysis of within-cases and, subsequently, cross-case analysis. Following the theory elaboration defined by Ketokivi and Choi (2014), propositions were developed based on the empirical and theoretical findings through the rationale of the dynamic capability view. As a result, procurement structure and external inventory were found as additional organisational issues, and a new rationale is proposed to explain how Procurement can create supply chain resilience through dynamically managing and controlling the identified organisational issues. The primary theoretical contribution of this research is applying a new perspective to the issue of resilience. The development of these capabilities may help Procurement managers to better cope with current critical supply disruptions and hence help to achieve company survival and competitiveness. / A busca pela resiliência nas cadeias de suprimentos, hoje inseridas em ambientes cada vez mais dinâmicos, requer esforços tanto internos quanto externos às empresas. Como grande parte do risco de ruptura da cadeia de suprimentos se encontra à montante da empresa focal, Compras tem se tornado uma função crítica; principalmente por ser responsável pela solução de conflitos e problemas entre clientes internos e fornecedores. No entanto, pouco se sabe sobre como Compras gerencia esses recursos de forma a lidar com rupturas de suprimentos. O objetivo deste estudo é compreender o papel de Compras na gestão de fatores (internos e externos), de modo a criar resiliência da cadeia de suprimentos. Para tanto, uma revisão teórica foi desenvolvida por meio do método de revisão sistemática da literatura. Neste, fatores internos e externos que podem impactar a resiliência na cadeia de suprimentos foram identificados e agrupados em oito pontos gerais: conhecimento adquirido, estoque interno, produto e tecnologia para pontos internos; e estratégia de suprimentos, configuração da cadeia, transporte e risco para pontos externos. Uma revisão sobre a teoria das capacidades dinâmicas foi também realizada, com intuito de oferecer uma análise mais aprofundada dos resultados obtidos na pesquisa empírica. De forma a completar a compreensão destes pontos, um estudo multicaso foi realizado em quatro empresas de diferentes setores, além de incluir dois fornecedores de cada empresa. Após a transcrição de todas as entrevistas, estas foram inseridas no software QDA Miner para a realização da análise de conteúdo caso a caso e intercasos. Seguindo a orientação de Ketokivi e Choi (2014), foram desenvolvidas proposições a partir da revisão bibliográfica e da análise dos dados empíricos dentro do contexto da teoria de capacidades dinâmicas. Observou-se que a estrutura de Compras e a presença de estoque externo foram apontadas como fatores adicionais. É apresentada também uma nova lógica para explicar como Compras pode criar resiliência na cadeia de suprimentos por meio de uma gestão dinâmica dos pontos-chave identificados sob a lente teórica. Tal resultado é caracterizado como principal contribuição teórica deste estudo. Em termos gerenciais, o desenvolvimento destas capacidades podem ajudar gerentes de Compras a reagirem às rupturas críticas de suprimentos, garantindo a competitividade e a sobrevivência da empresa.

Background & aims: Prior research has, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting supply chain (SC) disruptions, increased the level of investigations in the field of SC resilience strategies. Even though many studies have been conducted within the field, little is known about the effectiveness and efficiency of those strategies. As food SC’s (FSC’s) are among the most important SC’s in our societies, their conservation is of great importance. As the operational purchasing process within the FSC was one of the areas within the SC that was strongly affected by the pandemic, this process will be the focus of the paper. This study seeks to identify the most applied SC resilience strategies for operational purchasing activities in FSC’s for various SC disruptions from a SME food retailers perspective. Furthermore, a framework of how to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of those strategies will be developed. Method: To collect relevant empirical data to answer the purpose of the study a qualitative multiple-interview study is conducted based on semi-structured interviews with respondents of the three different case companies. The case companies were selected and four interviews with one to two respondents per company were conducted. European SME food retailers of long shelf life goods are used as case companies to investigate the research gaps. Results: The study found out that the application of theory revealed the five most applied SC resilience strategies (SC flexibility, inventory management, end-to-end (E2E) SC visibility (SCV), information technology (IT) tools and SC cooperation) in operational purchasing, differences between SME food retailers according to their company size and maturity level. The KPIs identified to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of these SC resilience strategies were found to be applied. The KPIs provided are the basis for measurement opportunities that should be adapted and expanded depending on the business model and complexity of the company as part of the SC design. Contributions: The study adds value through theoretical and practical contributions of the most applied SC resilience strategies within operational purchasing from a SME food retailer perspective and their performance measurement system for measuring efficiency and effectiveness. Limitation & future research: The study is limited to the Covid-19 pandemic as a major reason for the triggering of the investigated SC disruptions. Further limitations can be seen within the selection of the case companies. Future research should investigate the differences between SME within their application of SC resilience strategies for their operational purchasing activities, just like the differences between strategic and operational purchasing. Key words: supply chain resilience strategy, supply chain disruption, Covid-19 pandemic, supply chain effectiveness, supply chain efficiency, performance measurements, key performance indicator, food supply chain, food retailers, purchasing process, operational purchasing