Evidence Based Disruption Management

A crucial challenge for nowadays supply chain networks is represented by their resilience, intended as the
capability of ensuring business continuity in presence of disruptive events. Given the high
interdependencies among nodes within a network, strategies to mitigate disruption impact must consider
not only a single firm, but the entire network. However, the development of strategies to enhance network
resilience faces significant difficulties. Among them, a key factor often highlighted in literature is the lack of
transparency within the chain. Indeed, usually different partners in a SC are only aware of their own
function/products within the chain, while an overview of the overall chain, with corresponding
dependencies among the nodes, is missing. This often results in a lot of uncertainty for the companies
when it comes to react to disruptions. This project intends to address this issue by developing novel
methodologies and tools to allow companies to visualize their supply chain networks, and to investigate
how the related processes are interconnected. Visualizing the network will lead to a) improve network
transparency, and b) supporting decisions via both financial and operational actions to recover from
occurred disruptions. This network will enable quantitative analysis on how disruptions propagate through
the network which, in turn, will enable the development of disruption early-detection systems aimed to
timely notify companies when a disruption in the network is likely to impact their processes. Furthermore,
previously occurred disruptions on the built networks will be studied, to derive best practices in reaction
and recovery strategies from which recommendations to face current disruption can be built. These goals
are linked to the following Dinalog´s innovation themes: Supply Chain Management; Data driven Logistics;
ICT & Provision of Information; and Customs and Trade.