Impacts of Covid-19 on Supply Chains: Disruptions, Technologies, and Solutions

This book examines the effects of the pandemic on supply chains and consequent adjustments made by companies to cope with these effects. This research sheds light on the challenges faced by diverse industries during the COVID and post-COVID periods and the solutions employed by companies to tackle them. The book covers several strategies, such as fulfillment strategies, inventory management, insourcing/outsourcing decisions, agile operations adaptation, capacity management, supplier management, forecasting, and business analytics undertaken by firms and institutions to quickly adapt their supply chains to manage risks and operations during the pandemic. Through numerous cases studies, it explores the roles and impacts of new algorithms and technologies, such as digitization, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning methods, in risk mitigation and management in healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, automotive, food and beverage, and retail industries during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Written by professionals and academics, it presents invaluable insights gained from managing disruptions during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and identifies the factors for companies and industries to consider in making their supply chains resilient to similar disruptions. This invaluable resource particularly caters to researchers in academia or industry, practitioners, and graduate students alike.

Dr. Sridhar Seshadri is Alan J. and Joyce D. Baltz Endowed Professor for information systems/operations management/supply chain/analytics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. His research focuses on stochastic modelling and applications in manufacturing, supply chain management, and revenue management. Dr. Seshadri earned his Ph.D. in management science in 1993 from the University of California at Berkeley. He has published in several journals, including Management Science, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. He is the co-editor of the book Essentials of Business Analytics.

Dr. Mohammad Moshref-Javadi is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Department of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Dr. Moshref-Javadi obtained his Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, USA. His research focuses on supply chain analytics, logistics, and process improvement using data-driven optimization and simulation methods. Dr. Moshref-Javadi has published in various journals, such as European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Research, Computers & Operations Research, and Transportation Research Part E.