Modelling and improving supply chain agility

Abstract

This paper addresses the topic of supply chain agility (SCA), defined as the ability of supply chains (SCs) to respond quickly and effectively to internal and external disturbances. SCA plays a critical role in ensuring operations flows sustainability. Our work presents a quantitative model to evaluate and improve agility, in open-loop end-to-end SCs. We develop a mathematical model to simulate the information and physical flows that characterize complex SC networks. Our objective is to determine the SCA level when disruptions happen. The assessment of agility is crucial for SCs. Indeed, managers should be aware of the agility level of their networks with respect to potential disruptions to foster proactive and reactive capabilities and decide which agility levers to implement. Hence, we develop a model that allows to consider the different SC configurations one can encounter in practise and to measure the SCA level when disruptions occur as well as the one reached when activating one or more agility levers. To model real SC configurations, we consider different mono-product operations. This allows us to address complex networks without loss of generality. A numerical study is presented to illustrate the model developed in this work.