Development of a decision support system for assessing the supply chain risk mitigation strategies: an application in Indian petroleum supply chain

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a decision support system (DSS) to assist supply chain (SC) risk managers to select a suitable risk management (RM) strategy and expedite the implementation of corresponding RM enablers. The relationship between RM strategies and RM enablers is explored by identifying the underlying factors between them, which is further used to build the DSS.

Design/methodology/approach

The DSS is built by integrating heterogeneous techniques. A systematic review approach is employed to explore both proactive and reactive RM enablers, and they are further mapped to various RM strategies by using correspondence analysis (CA). An in-depth interview is conducted to develop the rules for constructing the decision system. A rule-based fuzzy inference system (FIS) is utilized to counteract the uncertainty involved in the decision variables. The efficacy of the proposed DSS is demonstrated by considering two conjectural scenarios in the case of Indian petroleum SC (IPSC).

Findings

The results reveal three primary underlying factors between the risk mitigation strategies viz. SC managers' preparedness to face risk, organization's resource capability to deal with risk and the sophistication of the implementation of the RM enablers; with explained variances of 37%, 29% and 22%, respectively. Risk avoidance strategy comprises of RM enablers such as supplier evaluation, technology adaption, information security, etc. Whereas, the risk-sharing strategy includes revenue sharing, insurance, collaboration, public-private-partnership, etc. as essential RM enablers. The DSS recommends risk-mitigation and risk-sharing as effective RM strategies for the IPSC under the considered scenarios.

Research limitations/implications

This paper develops a decision support framework for recommending an effective risk mitigation strategy and outranking the corresponding enablers. The study explicitly focuses on the risk mitigation step of the supply chain risk management (SCRM) process. Pre- and post-risk mitigation steps of the SCRM process, such as risk assessment and risk monitoring are beyond the scope of this research.

Originality/value

The operational procedure of the proposed DSS is explained by considering a real-life case of petroleum SC in the Indian scenario. The unique contributions of this study are presented as theoretical implications and managerial propositions in the context of a developing country.

Citation

Tarei, P.K., Thakkar, J.J. and Nag, B. (2021), "Development of a decision support system for assessing the supply chain risk mitigation strategies: an application in Indian petroleum supply chain", Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 506-535. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMTM-02-2020-0035