Title: Building robust supply chains by reducing vulnerability and improving resilience

Authors: Dimitrios Vlachos; Eleftherios Iakovou; Konstantinos Papapanagiotou; Daniel Partsch

Addresses: Laboratory of Quantitative Analysis, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece ' Laboratory of Quantitative Analysis, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece ' Laboratory of Quantitative Analysis, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece. ' Laboratory of Quantitative Analysis, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract: Powerful socioeconomic factors have been transforming dramatically supply chain networks, boosting the pursuit for resilience against disruptions, conflicts of interests and economic policies. As companies have to deal with disruptions that their outcome can have significant financial ramifications, both the academic world and industry keep now security and uninterrupted product flow from suppliers to end-users under close scrutiny. In this work, we study one of the dimensions of sustainable supply chains, that of supply chain risk management. To this end we provide definitions, methods, procedures, regulatory interventions aiming in reducing vulnerability and improving resilience as well as related business cases.

Keywords: supply chain risk; risk management; SCRM; risk mitigation; supply chain security; disruption; vulnerability; resilience; supply chain sustainability; sustainable development; supply chain management; SCM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2012.045899

International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, 2012 Vol.5 No.1, pp.59 - 81

Received: 04 Mar 2011
Accepted: 18 Dec 2011
Published online: 31 Jul 2014 *

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