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The readymade garments (RMG) industry acts as one of the foremost vital catalysts for financial as well as social advancement of Bangladesh. Due to the harsh impact of COVID-19, RMG sector has been confronting a never-seen-before phenomenon. Since the supply chain has seriously been influenced, concern raises among industry and policymakers on how to support against disturbances resulting from pandemics. Accordingly, this research aims to explore the vulnerability and capability factors of RMG sector in Bangladesh, their relationship and how these variables affect supply chain resilience.

A qualitative research design has been employed. In the first stage, content analysis has been performed. Since COVID-19 is a new experience, newspapers were the source to become acquainted with the vulnerability and capability factors following the guidelines provided by Pettit et al. (2010). In the second stage, in-depth interviews with key informants were conducted to investigate the relationship among the variables and how these factors may influence supply chain resilience.

This study identifies fourteen capability factors and their sub-factors of RMG industry in Bangladesh in order to improve the resilience capacity against the vulnerabilities in the context of COVID-19 pandemic.

This research is based on the setting of particular industry in Bangladesh, where respondents are immersed in a unique culture. Special care is required to generalize the results to other segments and phenomena.

The framework recognizes the balanced and unbalanced strength with the capability's components and find the relation between capabilities and vulnerabilities within the fashion industry. By creating the resilience network with the four conceivable positions, companies can find themselves with their capability's components and natural vulnerabilities.

This study investigates diverse components of capability figure against vulnerabilities to create the supply chain resilience. This paper, moreover, develops with four conceivable positions with their capabilities against existing vulnerabilities which brings timely contribution considering the context of COVID-19.

Critical infrastructure (CI) plays an essential role in reading, reacting and responding while dealing with natural disasters. This study address food supply chain resilience by proposing an FSC resilience model that explains the food product and transport flow via production, processing, distribution and retailing in circumstances of (CI) collapses post a natural disaster.

A combination of qualitative methods was conducted to obtain a comprehensive overview of the food and beverage sector in Puerto Rico. The full dataset comprised of seven focus groups for a total of 52 participants and 12 in-depth interviews.

FSC resilience is seen in this study through the managerial actions taken by members of the Chain: innovating, transforming, adapting, and flexibilising business models and operations.

This study is the first to address FSC resilience from the perspective of net food importer economy in the context of natural disasters and prolonged Critical infrastructure (CI) breakdown, and the first one in proposing an FSC resilience model that explains the food product and transport flow via production, processing, distribution and retailing in circumstances of CI collapses post a natural disaster.

Catastrophic supply chain disruptions can significantly damage the operational and financial performance of firms. While a growing body of literature on supply network structures has studied what influences supply networks' vulnerability to supply chain disruptions and capability to recover from them, it remains unclear how supply network structures change after major supply chain disruptions. We aim to provide an understanding of how these changes occur.

Using a natural experiment approach and supply network data from Factset, this study investigates how firms' supply network structures change after experiencing the catastrophic supply chain disruptions caused by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We capture post-earthquake supply network changes using the measures of degree centrality and ego network density.

The results of the analysis suggest that compared to unaffected firms, the affected firms experience changes in their supply network structures tending toward lower complexity measured by in-degree centrality, out-degree centrality and ego network density.

This study contributes to social network theory and the complex adaptive supply network literature by providing empirical evidence of structural changes in supply networks after catastrophic supply chain disruptions. A managerial contribution is made by providing a reflection on why these changes might be occurring and alert firms to the challenges of managing complexity in their supply networks.

The future retirement of US Air Force (USAF) legacy weapon systems (WSs) removes their associated funding from within the Air Force Working Capital Fund and their parts from its organic supply chain inventory. The trending outsourcing of product support to contracted logistics support and its potential long-term consequences to the USAF government-owned, government-operated, organic supply chain and the reconstitution capabilities it enables in the USAF’s organic industrial base, suggests the need to assess its risks. Although there is an existing body of research into the risks of outsourcing the USAF’s industrial repair, and federal legislation such as Core 50/50 laws enacted to institutionalize its risk management, there is comparatively little research into the outsourcing risks to the long-term viability of the supply chain on which that repair capability is dependent. The aim of this research is to fill that research gap by assessing and modeling those risks. This research concludes by providing several future research directions that may be evaluated to provide more detail.

Leveraging a conceptual model derived from research and a multi-criteria analysis framework to assess supply chain risk. Quantifying the predicted impact of retirements on funding and inventories of unique parts. Modeling the potential risk due to WS retirement.

Results indicated long term enterprise risks to the Air Force’s supply chain correlated to the retirement of WSs and their associated funding and spare parts inventory.

This research provides an in-depth evaluation of the USAF’s supply chain to assess the holistic risk of product support outsourcing and its long-term impacts on viability by using resource-based view and contingency theory as theoretical underpinnings. In addition, insights and implications for defense supply chain managers and decision-makers.

Resilience in agri-food supply chains (AFSCs) is an area of significant importance due to growing supply chain volatility. While the majority of research exploring supply chain resilience has originated from a supply chain management perspective, many other disciplines (such as environmental systems science and the social sciences) have also explored the topic. As complex social, economic and environmental constructs, the priority of resilience in AFSCs goes far beyond the company specific focus of supply chain management works and would conceivably benefit from including more diverse academic disciplines. However, this is hindered by inconsistencies in terminology and the conceptual components of resilience across different disciplines. The purpose of this study is to use a systematic literature review to identify which multidisciplinary aspects of resilience are applicable to AFSCs and to generate a novel AFSC resilience framework.

This paper uses a structured and multidisciplinary review of 137 articles in the resilience literature followed by critical analysis and synthesis of findings to generate new knowledge in the form of a novel AFSC resilience framework.

Findings indicate that the complexity of AFSCs and subsequent exposure to almost constant external interference means that disruptions cannot be seen as a one-off event; thus, resilience must concern the ability to not only maintain core function but also adapt to changing conditions.

A number of resilience elements can be used to enhance resilience, but their selection and implementation must be carefully matched to relevant phases of disruption and assessed on their broader supply chain impacts. In particular, the focus must be on overall impact on the ability of the supply chain as a whole to provide food security rather than to boost individual company performance.

The research novelty lies in the utilisation of wider understandings of resilience from various research fields to propose a rigorous and food-specific resilience framework with end consumer food security as its main focus.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains have become important policy tools to ensure the security and resilience of regional trading blocs of major economies. The US government’s focus on supply chains for selected strategic industries and the EU Commission’s renewed efforts to strengthen its supply chains using ‘sustainability standards’ coincides with the global trend in the shift towards digital and low-carbon economies. Furthermore, the rising tensions between the US and China, with no signs of reconciliation over key issues of contention, have emphasized the need for more credibility and trust in global supply chains. However, such policies also have the potential to serve as new barriers to participation in supply chains by less-developed economies which are not yet prepared to meet the high-level sustainability criteria which aim for higher protection of the environment and labor rights. There also seems to be an apparent shift in paradigm supporting the interventionist role of government that emphasize the need for more discretion for policy objectives that pursue societal and democratic values, not to mention national security interests. The current rules of international trade, however, do not sufficiently address these new issues and need to be realigned in order to meet the new demands. The current ‘rules of the game’ need to be reinforced in order to accommodate the rising need of countries for increased consideration of issues of sustainability and competitiveness.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions and revealed the fragilities in supply chains. This crisis has re-opened the debate on supply chain resilience and sustainability. This paper aims to investigate distinct impacts of COVID-19 on supply chains. It identifies both short- and medium-to-long-term measures taken to mitigate the different effects of the pandemic and highlights potential transformations and their impacts on supply chain sustainability and resilience.

To address the purpose of the study, a qualitative research approach based on case studies and semi-structured interviews with 15 practitioners from various supply chain types and sectors was conducted. Studied organizations included necessary and non-necessary supply chain sectors, which are differently impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study reveals five main challenges facing supply chains during COVID-19, including uncertain demand and supply, suppliers' concentration in specific regions, globalized supply chains, reduced visibility in the supply network, and limited supplier capacity. To help mitigate these challenges and develop both sustainability and resilience, this paper identifies some mitigating actions focusing on the promotion of the health and wellbeing of employees and supply chain stabilization. Further, in the post-COVID era, sustainable and resilient supply chains should consider regionalization of the supply chain, diversification of the supply network, agility, collaboration, visibility, and transparency; and should accelerate the use of smart technologies and circular economy practices as dynamic capabilities to improve supply chain resilience and sustainability.

This study contributes to exploring the sustainability- and resilience-related challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Its findings can be used by researchers and supply chains decision-makers to limit disruptions and improve responsiveness, resilience, sustainability, and restoration of supply chains. The results support benchmarking through sharing of the best practices and organizations can also integrate the different capabilities discussed in this study into the processes of selection and auditing of their suppliers.

Organizations, would they be individual companies or large multi-firm networks, face a wide variety of potential risks requiring dedicated keen management. It all the better applies to supply-chains as risk, related to both physical and information flows, pervades the whole logistics network and has acquired a new and growing security dimension since 9/11. More specifically, as they are now under the permanent threat of terrorism, and because offering sufficient security levels is bound to become a necessary condition for global supply-chain membership, seaports need to adjust their risk management strategy and processes accordingly. In such a context, this paper aims at describing the project of a decision-support system, dedicated to container transit security-wise decision making and which features an expert-system architecture.

Blockchain technology is provoking significant disruptions, thereby affecting supply chain management. This study endeavoured to advance research regarding blockchain-based supply chain traceability by identifying the opportunities and limitations that accompany the adoption of public blockchains. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to contribute to contemporary supply chain research by an assessment of blockchain technology and its linkages to traceability.

This paper is conceptual. The authors summarised the relevant literature on the concepts of supply chain traceability, conceptualised key elements exclusive to the public blockchain and highlighted opportunities and limitations in implementing traceability using blockchains.

Incompatibilities were identified between general traceability and the public blockchain. However, when embracing the blockchain's privacy model, the blockchains can support information exchange in supply chains where vulnerability towards third parties, the confidentiality of information, or the privacy of participants are concerns. Furthermore, the public blockchain can support areas of supply chains where institutional interest is lacking.

This is one of the first papers in an international supply chain management journal to critically analyse the intersection of specific blockchain characteristics and supply chain traceability requirements. The authors thereby add to the discussion of designs for a disintermediated, peer-to-peer models and guide researchers and practitioners alike in exploring the application of disruptive change from blockchain technologies. By setting focus on the privacy model, the paper identifies the potential application and future research approaches to exploit the elementary strength of the blockchain.