ABSTRACT
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected emerging economies' global supply chains (SCs) by disrupting their manufacturing activities. To ensure business survivability during the current and post-COVID-19 era, it is crucial to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to renovate traditional manufacturing activities. The fifth industrial revolution, Industry 5.0 (I5.0), and artificial intelligence (AI) offer the overwhelming potential to build an inclusive digital future by ensuring supply chain (SC) resiliency and sustainability. Accordingly, this research aims to identify, assess, and prioritize the AI-based imperatives of I5.0 to improve SC resiliency. An integrated and intelligent approach consisting of Pareto analysis, the Bayesian approach, and the Best-Worst Method (BWM) was developed to fulfill the objectives. Based on the literature review and expert opinions, nine AI-based imperatives were identified and analyzed using Bayesian-BWM to evaluate their potential applicability. The findings reveal that real-time tracking of SC activities using the Internet of Things (IoT) is the most crucial AI-based imperative to improving a manufacturing SC's survivability. The research insights can assist industry leaders, practitioners, and relevant stakeholders in dealing with the impacts of large-scale SC disruptions in the post-COVID-19 era.
ABSTRACT
Logistics is a crucial function for any organisation. In the scenario of a pandemic or other disruptions, the role of logistics becomes even more important. Digitalisation of logistics and the supply chain is seen as an important tool for logistics resilience in such situations, but for developing countries digitalisation poses certain challenges. This study identifies barriers to innovative digitalisation technology that hinder the digital elevation of supply chain logistics during a pandemic. Strategies to deal with and overcome these barriers are proposed. The multi-criteria decision analysis method (Bayesian best-worst method) is used to prioritise such barriers within the context of the Indian logistics sector of manufacturing organisations. The strategies are also prioritised according to their impact on the barriers, for which the additive value function is used. The results show that “high cost of investment”, “lack of monetary resources”, “inadequate internet connectivity”, “lack of IT (Information Technology) infrastructure” and “unclear economic benefit of digital investment” are the top five barriers to implementing innovative digitalisation technologies in developing countries like India, during a pandemic situation. The findings reveal an insight into digitalisation barriers during a pandemic that can be of value to managers and researchers.