ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of global manufacturing companies to their supply chains and operating activities as one of the significant disruption events of the past two decades. It has demonstrated that major companies underestimate the need for sustainable and resilient operations. The pandemic has resulted in significant disruptions especially in the automotive industry. The goal of the study is to determine impact of the COVID-19 on supply chain operations in a Turkish automotive manufacturer and to develop a framework for improving operational activities to survive in the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) environment. The study identifies how the case study company has been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak and what challenges the company faced during the pandemic. A diagnostic survey and semi-structured interviews were used as data sources with qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results showed that the pandemic led to significant disruptions through various factors explained by shortage of raw materials/spare parts, availability of transportation, availability of labors, demand fluctuations, increase in sick leaves, new health and safety regulations. Findings also show the necessity to re-design resilience supply chain management by providing recovery plans (forecasting, supplier selection, simulation, monitoring) which consider different measures in different stages. In addition, the best practices were recommended for the case study by considering internal, external, and technological challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the given targeted guidelines and improvement for the automotive company might be applicable in the industrial practices for other organizations. The article concludes with future research directions and managerial implications for successful applications.
ABSTRACT
The main purpose of the paper is to identify and analyse a state of exploratory motivating factors in terms of lean management as the instrument of a policy of human resource man-agement in the face of COVID-19 pandemic implemented in service companies. The main question is: if the motivation system used in the companies works out up against the unpre-dictable situation such as COVID-19 pandemic? The secondary purpose of the paper is to recognise relations and dependencies between these factors, and the question is: what factors have the strongest or the weakest relations with Lean Staff Management (LSM) tools? This research designed based on interview was conducted due to the lack of existing studies on the current status of motivating factors in terms of lean management tools in two service companies (case studies) in the light of COVID-19. The results show that factors influencing work efficiency in a dominating manner were, primarily, financial incentives (almost 21%), communications (around 21%), and workplace atmosphere (almost 18%). The paper inves-tigates also the benefits and concerns of implementing LSM in service companies during the pandemic. This research might help the service organization's management to identify the employees' problems to implement more effective lean services.