Effective Management of Manufacturing Supply Chain Risks: A Sri Lankan Perspective

Abstract

Due to the increasing vulnerability of supply chains, the concepts of supply chain risk management and supply chain resilience have gained attention both in the industry and in academia, globally. This research focused on the supply chain risk management landscape in Sri Lanka's manufacturing industries as prevalent in mid-2019. To understand this, an investigation on the maturity of supply chain risk management processes in Sri Lankan organisations was carried out during the month of June in 2019. The research further extended to explore the practitioner perception on supply chain vulnerability and to examine the relationships among supply chain vulnerability, supply chain risk management maturity, and supply chain resilience for the Sri Lankan manufacturing sector. To gather data for the research, a carefully designed online questionnaire was circulated among industry practitioners in Sri Lanka representing the management tier of their employer. Altogether 42 responses were received of which 39 were considered for analysis that comprised a confirmatory factor analysis to validate the adopted theoretical model. The findings suggest that overall supply chain risk management process maturity in Sri Lanka is at a `proactive' level where individual firms have succeeded in adopting formal standalone processes to counteract supply chain risks despite failing to achieve significant integration across the end-to-end supply chain. It could also be concluded that Sri Lankan supply chain professionals perceive vulnerability of Sri Lankan supply chains as being moderate and that supply chain risk management process maturity positively influences supply chain resilience in the Sri Lankan context.