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Prioritizing the vaccine supply chain issues of developing countries using an integrated ISM-fuzzy ANP framework

Dheeraj Chandra (Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India)
Dinesh Kumar (Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India)

Journal of Modelling in Management

ISSN: 1746-5664

Article publication date: 11 October 2019

Issue publication date: 22 January 2020

684

Abstract

Purpose

Delivering vaccines to the children who need them requires a supply chain that is efficient and effective. In most of the developing countries, however, the unknown and unresolved supply chain issues are causing inefficiencies in distributing vaccines. There is, therefore, a great need in such countries to recognize the issues that cause delays in vaccine delivery. With this purpose, the present study aims to identify and analyze the key issues in the supply chain of basic vaccines required to immunize children in developing countries.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a field survey of three states of India, in-depth review of relevant literature and experts’ opinions, 25 key issues were recognized as factors of the vaccine supply chain (VSC) and categorized into five main domains. Using integrated interpretive structural modeling and fuzzy analytic network process approaches, the issues have been prioritized to determine their relative importance in the VSC. In addition, a sensitivity analysis has been performed to investigate the priority stability of the issues.

Findings

The results of the analysis show that among the five domains of VSC issues, the economic domain with a weight of 0.4262 is the most important domain, followed by the management (0.2672), operational (0.2222), environmental (0.0532) and social (0.0312).

Research limitations/implications

This study focuses on the prioritization of VSC issues; therefore, the results of the present study can provide direction to the decision-makers of immunization programs of developing countries in driving their efforts and resources on eliminating the most important obstacles to design successful vaccination programs.

Originality/value

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is first to provide a direction to the decision-makers in identifying and managing important issues through the use of an analytical approach.

Keywords

Citation

Chandra, D. and Kumar, D. (2020), "Prioritizing the vaccine supply chain issues of developing countries using an integrated ISM-fuzzy ANP framework", Journal of Modelling in Management, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 112-165. https://doi.org/10.1108/JM2-08-2018-0111

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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