Structural-aware simulation analysis of supply chain resilience

Supply chain resilience (SCRES) refers to the ability of a supply chain (SC) to both resist disruptions and recover its operational capability after disruptions. This paper presents a simulation model that includes network structural properties in the analysis of SCRES. This simulation model extends an existing graph model to consider operational behaviours in order to capture disruption-recovery dynamics. Through structural analysis of a supply chain network (SCN), mitigation strategies are designed to build redundancy, while contingency strategies are developed to prioritise recovery of the affected SCN. SCRES indexes are proposed by sampling SC performance measures of disruption for each plant and aggregating the measures based on the criticality of the plants in the SCN. The applicability of this simulation model is demonstrated in a real-world case study of different disruption scenarios. The application of mitigation and contingency strategies is shown to both improve recovery and reduce the total costs associated with disruptions. Through such simulation-based analysis, firms can gain insight into the SCRES of their existing SCNs and identify suitable strategies to improve SCRES by considering recovery time and costs.