In the early onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., consumers experienced surprising shortages of essential goods such as toilet paper, yeast and flour, and some of their favorite meat cuts that appeared to be unrelated to the pandemic at first look. The “usual” explanations attributing these shortages to “demand spikes” (e.g., foreign suppliers, trade wars and tariffs, and “hoarding behavior” of panicked consumers) often failed to explain them, and in the best of cases, predicted only temporary shortages. However, shortages in these supply chains ended up being in many cases real “supply chain struggles,” with their true causes going beyond the “usual” ones, and revealing a set of deeper and “unusual causes.” Our detailed analysis of the affected supply chains identifies these overlooked failure factors and hidden causes. Our underestimated causes include demand shifts among market segments, siloed demand planning, bottlenecks in shared resources such as transportation and distribution, and supply chain structures driven by the economics of an efficiency era that failed in a risk-fraught environment. We conclude on the profound lessons learned from the pandemic crisis on supply chains, and the implied challenges to address for building resilient supply chains for the future. The resilient supply chains of the future require rethinking the relevant “systems” we plan and optimize (e.g., firm, industry, region, global factor resources, etc.). The usual answer of building firm-specific redundancy of assets and operational flexibility might be prohibitive in the level of investment required for any one firm, or their financial stakeholders, to pursue and accept.
Keywords: supply chain | pandemic | essential goods | shortages

This paper presents a methodological design framework for Hydrogen and Methane Supply Chains (HMSC) based on Power-to-Gas (PtG) systems. The novelty of the work is twofold, first considering a specific demand for hydrogen for electromobility in addition to the hydrogen demand required as a feedstock to produce synthetic methane from the methanation process. and performing a bi-objective optimization of the HMSC to provide effective support for the study of deployment scenarios. The approach is based on a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) approach with augmented epsilon-constraint implemented in the GAMS environment according to a multi-period approach (2035-2050) with several available energy sources (wind, PV, hydro, national network) for hydrogen production. Carbon dioxide sources stem mainly from mechanization and gasification processes. The objectives to be minimized simultaneously are the Total Annual Cost and the greenhouse gas emissions related to the whole HMSC over the entire period studied.
KEYWORDS: Power-to-Gas | Methanation | Hydrogen | MILP | Augmented epsilon constraint | GAMS | optimization approach

While addressing supply chain planning under uncertainty, Robust Optimization (RO) is regarded as an efficient and tractable method. As RO involves calculation of several statistical moments or maximum / minimum values involving the objective functions under realizations of these uncertain parameters, the accuracy of this method significantly depends on the efficient techniques to sample the uncertainty parameter space with limited amount of data. Conventional sampling techniques, e.g. box/budget/ellipsoidal, work by sampling the uncertain parameter space inefficiently, often leading to inaccuracies in such estimations. This paper proposes a methodology to amalgamate machine learning and data analytics with RO, thereby making it data-driven. A novel neuro fuzzy clustering mechanism is implemented to cluster the uncertain space such that the exact regions of uncertainty are optimally identified. Subsequently, local density based boundary point detection and Delaunay triangulation based boundary construction enable intelligent Sobol based sampling to sample the uncertain parameter space more accurately. The proposed technique is utilized to explore the merits of RO towards addressing the uncertainty issues of product demand, machine uptime and production cost associated with a multiproduct, and multisite supply chain planning model. The uncertainty in supply chain model is thoroughly analysed by carefully constructing examples and its case studies leading to large scale mixed integer linear and nonlinear programming problems which were efficiently solved in GAMS framework. Demonstration of efficacy of the proposed method over the box, budget and ellipsoidal sampling method through comprehensive analysis adds to other highlights of the current work.
Keywords: Uncertainty Modelling | Supply chain Management | Data driven Robust Optimization | Neuro Fuzzy Clustering | Multi-Layered Perceptron

Despite the increasing interest in the role of business model design (BMD) in improving performance, its in- fluence on operational performance remains unexplored, as do the underlying mechanisms of such effects. Drawing on dynamic capability theory, we propose that supply chain integration (SCI), including external integration and internal integration, mediates the relationship between BMD and operational performance. Matched survey data and objective performance data were collected from 131 Chinese manufacturing firms in three waves to test our research model. The key results are that external integration fully mediates the effect of novelty-centered BMD on operational performance, and efficiency-centered BMD directly improves operational performance. Theoretical and practical insights on how BMD and SCI can be leveraged to support operational performance are discussed.
Keywords: Business model design | Supply chain integration | Operational performance | Dynamic capability theory

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global supply chains and exposed weak links in the chains far beyond what most people have witnessed in their living memory. The scale of disruption affects every nation and industry, and the sudden and dramatic changes in demand and supply that have occurred during the pandemic crisis clearly differentiate its impact from other crises. Using the dynamic capabilities view, we studied alliance management capability (AMC) and artificial intelligence (AI) driven supply chain analytics capability (AI-SCAC) as dynamic capabilities, under the moderating effect of environmental dynamism. We tested our four research hypotheses using survey data collected from the Indian auto components manufacturing industry. For data analysis we used Warp PLS 7.0 (a variance-based structural equation modelling tool). We found that alliance management capability under the mediating effect of artificial intelligence-powered supply chain analytics capability enhances the operational and financial performance of the organization. Moreover, we also observed that the alliance management capability has a significant effect on artificial intelligence-powered supply chain analytics capability under the moderating effect of environmental dynamism. The results of our study provide a nuanced understanding of the dynamic capabilities and the relational view of organization. Finally, we noted the limitations of our study and provide numerous research directions that may help answer some of the questions that arise from our study.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence | Supply chain analytics | Alliance management | Environmental dynamism | Dynamic capability view