Impacts of Global disruptions on supply chain configuration

Abstract

The past three decades have witnessed the rapid development of global configuration of supply chains, thanks to low trade barriers and well-developed international logistics among countries. However, recent disruptions like trade conflicts and epidemic disruptions (e.g., COVID-19) have disrupted the original configuration of supply chains by export restriction, escalated tariffs, and social distancing measures (SDMs) such as lockdown and travel restrictions, limiting the global flow of raw materials and finished products. Existing literature rarely analyzes the propagation impacts of long-term disruptions on firms. To fill this research gap, this paper aims to explore the impacts from the perspective of global supply chain configuration (SCC) by establishing mixed-integer programming models. Problems including basic impacts of SDMs, dynamic impacts of SDMs, impacts on closed-loop supply chain configuration will be tackled. Until now, we have finished an evaluation on the impacts of trade conflicts on global SCC. The critical factors under certain circumstances have been analyzed. The potential impacts and implications for supply chains, firms, and policymakers are discussed. Besides, an introduction and some basic models for the basic impacts of SDMs have been finished, which deserves further numerical analysis to obtain managerial insights.

Keywords: trade conflicts; social distancing measures; COVID-19; propagation impacts; global supply chain configuration; closed-loop supply chain.