Building strategic resilience in the food supply chain

Abstract

The research included a literature review and the development of a resilience model 8 that can be adopted in the food supply chain at both a strategic and an operational level. 9 Findings: Conflict of interest exist for organisations that are seeking to strategically and 10 effectively manage the pluralistic nature of internal and external supply chain risks. The 11 model derived in this research can be used in the food supply chain to drive supply chain 12 agility, organisational stability and longevity, and as a result continuous improvement. 13 Originality/value-This research is of academic value and of value to policy makers and 14 practitioners in the food supply chain. 15 16 Keywords benchmarking, performance, indicators, stakeholders, value 17 18 include: natural disasters, technological accidents, infectious diseases, terrorism, and food 24 safety incidents (Leat and Revoredo-Giha, 2013), food fraud and wider food crime and 25 market and pricing strategies. Factors that affect supply chain resilience can be internal i.e. 26 within the supply chain network or external factors often outside the control of the 27 organisations involved. These factors can be categorised as: processes such as transport, 28 communication and infrastructure; controls including protocols, policies, procedures, systems 29 Page 1 of 24 British Food Journal and assumptions; and demand and supply related issues such as the fear of, or actual 30 disturbances to, the multi-directional flow of materials, product, finance and information 31 (Christopher and Peck, 2004). Driving a business strategy focused primarily on cost reduction 32 without sufficient regard for the risks that this strategy creates will make the food supply 33 chain more brittle (Viswanadham and Kameshwaran, 2013; Waters, 2007). Food supply chain brittleness is centred on factors such as low financial margins, low profitability and low 35 resource stocks i.e. a lean management approach that can combine in multiple ways with 36 social factors (e.g. consumer trust and brand loyalty) and factors such as weather vulnerability 37 that affects quality or yield, price volatility or natural variation. The degree of financial 38 brittleness in a particular food supply chain will depend on the level of profitability, liquidity, 39 the ability to meet loan repayments and continue to implement capital investment plans that 40 underpin business growth. Ultimately, lower operating margins reduce financial flexibility 41 and create a more brittle supply chain that is vulnerable to major risks such as animal disease, 42 volatility in commodity markets and an increasing cost of legal and/or social compliance. 43 Conversely, food supply chain agility is determined by the level of financial return, 44 efficiency, innovation, resource management and the ability to have alternative sourcing 45 mechanisms in place for key ingredients, organisational responsiveness and underpinning 46 product quality that consistently meets customer requirements. For resilience to be assured in 47

Resilience in agri-food supply chains: a critical analysis of the literature and synthesis of a novel framework

“…Return time, efficiency, constancy and predictability (King, 2008) Thresholds of disturbance that will lead to new system. Persistence and adaptability (Folke, 2006;King, 2008;Lebel et al, 2006;Redman, 2014) Milestad and Darnhofer (2003) "The magnitude of disturbance that can be experienced before a system moves into a different state with different sets of controls" "Supply Chain resilience is concerned with the system's ability to return to its original state or to a new, more desirable, one, after experiencing a disturbance, and avoiding the occurrence of failure modes" X Ivanov et al (2015) "Resilience refers to the capacity of organizations or systems to return to full functionality in the face of disruption" X Yang and Xu (2015) "The ability of a system to return to its original state or move to a new and more desirable state after being disturbed, or to adapt existing resources and skills to new situations and operating conditions, in order to survive despite withstanding a severe and enduring impact" X Fałkowski (2015) "The term "resilience" refers to the ability of a system to maintain output close to potential in the aftermath of shocks or, alternatively, the ability of a system to return to its original state after being disturbed" X Leat and Revoredo-Giha 2013"Resilience aims at developing the adaptive capability of the chain to prepare for unexpected events and to respond to disruptions and recover from them" X Manning and Soon (2016) "Strategic resilience is not about responding to a single crisis or rebounding from a setback, it encompasses anticipating and reacting to secular trends that can permanently impair the earning power of the core business" X…”

Impacts of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains: Facts and Perspectives

“…In long-term planning, supplier diversification, and capacity redundancy reduce the risk of disruptions when supply chains experience restricted activities due to a catastrophic event [68], [69]. A preferred strategy is to cooperate with suppliers in different geographic locations.…”

Insights into food system exposure, coping capacity and adaptive capacity

“…Public policies need to consider vulnerability shifts between economic, environmental and social dimensions of vulnerability, while private policies need to address vulnerability shifts within the food supply chains, since actors in the food supply chains are in very different positions in terms of their adaptive 15 capacity. This is also related to the strategic management of internal and external supply chain risks, which involves conflicts of interests (Manning and Soon, 2016).…”