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. 2022 Dec 15:1–17. Online ahead of print. doi: 10.1007/s12063-022-00328-x

Two years of COVID-19 pandemic: Understanding the role of knowledge-based supply chains towards resilience through bibliometric and network analyses

Abhijit Majumdar 1,✉, Rohit Agrawal 2, Rakesh D Raut 3, Balkrishna E Narkhede 3
PMCID: PMC9750840

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) catastrophically disrupted most of the global supply chains (SC). Knowledge-based SC can cope with the pandemic disruptions by the efficient use of data, information, knowledge, human intelligence and emerging technologies. This article aims to critically analyse the SC research during the two years of COVID-19 pandemic to understand the role of knowledge-based supply chain towards SC resilience. A review of the 281 shortlisted articles is presented, along with bibliometric and network analyses in order to create an intellectual map of the domain and to identify the emerging knowledge themes. Bibliometric analysis reveals that the knowledge focus during this short span has migrated from COVID-19 pandemic to SC risk management and finally to risk mitigation strategies. The network analysis identifies five emerging knowledge themes, namely impact of COVID-19 on SC; SC risk mitigation and resilience; supply chain viability; sustainable SC strategies; and food SC. This review also elucidates the strategies to mitigate COVID-19 disruptions for incorporating resilience in SC. Future research directions for a knowledge-based sustainable-leagile-resilient (S-leagilient) supply chain have also been propounded.

Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; COVID-19 pandemic; Digitisation, Knowledge-based supply chain: network analysis; Supply chain resilience; Supply chain strategies

Introduction

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first identified in Wuhan city of China in October 2019. In March 2020, the spread of the virus was so pervasive that the COVID-19 was declared as a global pandemic by WHO (Grinberga-Zalite et al. 2021; Ortiz-Barrios et al. 2021). As of 30th October 2022, 635.37 million COVID-19 positive cases were detected, causing 6.59 million deaths across the world. Most of the countries declared stringent lockdown at different places, specially at markets, malls etc., which led to significant disruption in the supply chain (SC). All businesses faced gigantic challenges due to these unprecedented happenings (Zarghami 2021). Vulnerabilities faced by SC were caused by lack of supply of raw materials and components, demand fluctuations, disruption in the network, non-availability of different modes of transportation (Deshpande et al. 2022). According to a report published in Fortune magazine, among the fortune-1000 companies, 94% reported disruption in their SC (Chowdhury et al. 2021; Ivanov and Dolgui 2021). On the other hand, few supply chains like medicine, personal protective equipment (PPE), facemask, oximeter, and ventilator saw a massive rise in demand (Hu 2022; Omar et al. 2022). Moreover, supply, transportation, and logistics were severely affected because of the closure of international borders, lockdown in countries, restrictions in vehicle movement, shortages of labour, and, most importantly, maintaining social distancing with others (Chowdhury et al. 2021).

SC risk management has become a prominent research area in the last two decades (Ivanov and Dolgui 2021). However, COVID-19 pandemic showed some unprecedented disruptions in demand and supply. Due to these debilitating impacts of COVID-19 on SC, the financial market and economy nosedived in many countries, and even the World Trade Organisation announced that the global trade may decrease by about 13–32% (WTO 2020). Looking at the severe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the various activities of SC, researchers renewed their focus towards enhancing the SC capabilities and resiliency to deal with the present and future pandemics (Hosseini et al. 2016; Lusiantoro and Pradiptyo 2022). As a result, a huge proliferation of research articles focussing on SC disruptions during COVID-19 was seen. One of the ways to incorporate resilience in SC is to imbibe the philosophies of a knowledge-based SC that relies on data, information, knowledge, intelligence and uses the advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and Industry 4.0 (Frederico et al., 2020). It is imperative for the traditional SCs to transform to knowledge-based SCs so that the untoward consequences of disruptions can be mitigated. Taking cognisance of the disruptions that happened in the SC during COVID-19, many researchers worked on identifying the role of knowledge-based supply chains on resilience.

A few review articles are already available on the impact of COVID-19 on SC to map the scientific literature of this domain (Queiroz et al. 2020; Verma and Gustafsson 2020a; Chowdhury et al. 2021; Montoya-Torres et al. 2021; Pujawan and Bah 2021; Cordeiro et al. 2021). Most of these articles present systematic literarture review concentrating on limited number of articles (Queiroz et al. 2020; Chowdhury et al. 2021; Pujawan and Bah 2021) while some others have used bibliometic analysis (Cordeiro et al. 2021). Verma and Gustafsson (2020b) used network analysis based on co-words only whereas Montoya-Torres et al. (2021) used co-occurrence of author keywords to determine major themes of research articles published in 2020. A glance at the aforesaid reviews show that the articles published till the end of 2020 have been covered. This review extends the temporal span of the analysis by including articles published till the end of 2021. Moreover, use of network analysis has been done sparingly; and mapping of emerging knowledge themes with the aid of bibliographic coupling is still missing in existing reviews. As the knowledge themes during this turbulant phase are transitory in nature, it is important to redraw the pattern of scientific literature more frequently. From the ongoing discussion, we posit three research questions and attempt to answer these through our research:

RQ1. What are the trends of SC research during COVID-19?

RQ2. What are the emerging knowledge themes of SC research during COVID-19?

RQ3. What strategies should be adopted in a knowledge-based SC to cope with pandemic disruptions?

To answer the aforesaid research questions, this article presents a review of literature, published till the end of 2021, using bibliometric and network analyses. SCOPUS database was considered to identify the articles. A set of 281 articles were shortlisted based on the selected keywords and inclusion/exclusion criteria. Bibliometric and network analyses were performed to create an intellectual map and to identify emerging knowledge themes in this domain. Finally, future research directions are presented to attain a knowledge-based sustainable-leagile-resilient (S-leagilient) SC. Rest of this article is arranged as follows. Section 2 presents the methodology adopted. Section 3 elucidates the results of bibliometric analysis, followed by the results of network analysis in section 4. Section 5 explains the emerging knowledge themes. The discussion on mitigation strategies, managerial implications and future research directions has been elaborated in section 6. Finally, section 7 presents the conclusion.

Methodology

A systematic literature review (SLR) attempts to answer some specific research questions pertaining to a research field. It enables understanding of the considered field without any bias and provides information about the past and current research work done. It also enables propositions for future research directions. The main aim of a literature review is to identify research gaps by investigating published articles, which further helps in enhancing the scientific body of knowledge in the considered field. This study uses the SLR methodology as shown by (Sharma et al. 2020c). The flow chart used in the SLR methodology is presented in Fig. 1. It starts with selecting suitable keywords in the relevant field, identifying and shortlisting essential articles, and then reviewing shortlisted articles.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

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The flowchart of analysis

Database selection

In this work, research articles were analysed in the SC domain in COVID-19. SCOPUS database was considered to identify and shortlist the research article in the selected field. The reason for considering the SCOPUS database is, it has the most extensive database, which includes articles from almost all reputed publishers (IEEE, Elsevier, Emerald insights, Wiley, Springer, Tailor and Francis, and many more). While Web of Science covers 24,952 journals (Web of Science 2020), SCOPUS encompasses 39,237 journals (SCOPUS 2022).

Keywords selection

The article explores the research work in the field of the SC during COVID-19. The selection of keywords is an essential aspect of selecting relevant articles in the considered field. The considered keywords were fed to the SCOPUS database by using Boolean expression: TITLE (“Supply chain” AND COVID).

Inclusion and exclusion of articles

This study included only peer-reviewed research and review articles published till December 2021 in the field of SC in COVID-19. Articles written only in the English language were considered in this study. This study excluded conference papers, book chapters, and Erratum because they do not have a stringent peer-review process. Using the keywords and inclusion and exclusion criteria, a set of 281 articles were identified to be considered for this review.

Bibliometric analysis

This section attempts to address the RQ1 through bibliometric analysis. Bibliometric analysis helps to analyse the statistics of published articles in the considered field. The bibliometric analysis shows the data pertaining to authors, journals, articles, keywords, collaboration networks, country statistics, and so on. Researchers have used various packages to perform the bibliometric study, namely CiteSpace, HistCite, BibExcel, and R package (Sharma et al. 2020c). As the R package is open-source software with an excellent web interface to analyse bibliometric data, it was used in this research to perform the bibliometric analysis. In this study, publication trends, important journals, prolific authors, impactful articles, frequently occurring keywords have been identified to frame an intellectual map of SC research in COVID-19.

Publication trends

The yearly trend of published articles is presented in Fig. 2. It can be seen from the figure that research started in 2019, where Indonesian researchers published the first article. They emphasised the SC of drug delivery during the COVID-19 scenario. From 2020 to 2021 (till October), a hopping growth (163%) in terms of research articles has been observed.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

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Year-wise statistics of articles on SC in COVID-19

Top contributing journals

The leading journals in the field of the SC in COVID-19 are shown in Table 1. The leading journal publishing articles in the SC during COVID-19 is Sustainability (Switzerland) with 16 articles, followed by International Journal of Logistics Management, International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, and Operations Management Research with 14, 8, and 8 articles, respectively. Other journals that received top 10 positions in the considered area are International Journal of Operations and Production Management, International Journal of Production Research, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Computers and Industrial Engineering, IEEE Engineering Management Review, and Supply Chain Management. These top 10 journals contribute to 28.5% of the total articles considered in this study.

Table 1.

Top ten journals in terms of number of articles

Sources No. of Articles
Sustainability (Switzerland) 16
International Journal of Logistics Management 14
International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications 8
Operations Management Research 8
International Journal of Operations and Production Management 7
International Journal of Production Research 6
Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 6
Computers and Industrial Engineering 5
IEEE Engineering Management Review 5
Supply Chain Management 5
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Author and country statistics

The top ten contributing authors in the SC in COVID-19 are presented in Table 2. Ivanov D is the topmost author with 12 articles, followed by Paul SK and Kumar A with 9 and 8 articles, respectively. The countries whose researchers are working on the SC in COVID-19 are presented in Table 3. From Table 3, it is found that USA, India, and China are the major contributing countries with 128, 107, and 71 articles, respectively. It can be seen that, among the top ten countries, 60% are Asian countries. UK and France are the two European countries, which have also contributed to this area.

Table 2.

Top contributing authors

Authors No. of Articles
Ivanov D 12
Paul SK 9
Kumar A 8
Ali SM 6
Moktadir MA 6
Gunasekaran A 4
Mangla SK 4
Sharma M 4
Shi X 4
Wang Y 4
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Table 3.

Top ten countries publishing articles on SC in COVID-19

Country No. of Articles*
USA 128
India 107
China 71
UK 58
Australia 31
Iran 27
Bangladesh 21
Pakistan 21
France 18
Indonesia 17
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*For articles with authors from multiple countries, the count has been given to all countries

Citations statistics of articles

Global citation is the citations received by articles globally from the SCOPUS database. The top 10 articles in the descending order of global citations are presented in Table 4. From Table 4, it is found that out of 10 articles, four are from the same author, i.e., Ivanov D. It can also be found that Ivanov (2020a) received the highest global citation of 444, followed by Ivanov and Dolgui (2020) and Hobbs (2021) with 285 and 257 citations respectively. Ivanov (2020a) used simulation tools to predict the impact of COVID-19 on the SC using simulation and optimisation. The study identified both short-term and long-term impacts and conducted sensitivity analysis at different scenarios to open and close facilities at different locations to overcome the COVID-19 outbreak. Ivanov and Dolgui (2020) discussed the viability of SC networks. The study discussed intertwined supply networks and proposed a conceptual model for decision-making in SC viability. Hobbs (2020) discussed the consumer consumption pattern during COVID-19 in the food SC. The study analysed disruptions in the supply side, such as labour shortage, movement of goods, etc., in the pandemic.

Table 4.

Top ten globally cited articles on SC in COVID-19

Author Title of the paper Total citations Citations per year
Ivanov (2020a) “Predicting the impacts of epidemic outbreaks on global supply chains: A simulation-based analysis on the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2) case” 444 222
Ivanov and Dolgui (2020) “Viability of intertwined supply networks: extending the supply chain resilience angles towards survivability. A position paper motivated by COVID-19 outbreak” 285 142.5
Hobbs (2020) “Food supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic” 257 128.5
Ivanov (2020b) “Viable supply chain model: integrating agility, resilience and sustainability perspectives—lessons from and thinking beyond the COVID-19 pandemic” 174 87
Queiroz et al. (2020) “Impacts of epidemic outbreaks on supply chains: mapping a research agenda amid the COVID-19 pandemic through a structured literature review” 157 78.5
Guan et al. (2020) “Global supply-chain effects of COVID-19 control measures” 141 70.5
Govindan et al. (2020) “A decision support system for demand management in healthcare supply chains considering the epidemic outbreaks: A case study of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)” 132 66
Remko (2020) “Research opportunities for a more resilient post-COVID-19 supply chain–closing the gap between research findings and industry practice” 111 55.5
Singh et al. (2021) “Impact of COVID-19 on logistics systems and disruptions in food supply chain” 95 95
Ivanov and Das (2020) “Coronavirus (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2) and supply chain resilience: A research note” 83 41.5
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Keyword statistics

Keyword statistics enables the identification of the most frequently used keywords by authors in the research articles. Table 5 shows the top 20 keywords used in the field of SC in COVID-19. From Table 5, it is found that the keywords are mainly focused on three knowledge domains, namely, SC issues (supply chains, food supply, supply chain management, supply chain resilience, and supply-chain disruptions etc.), COVID-19 pandemic related issues (COVID-19, coronavirus, pandemic, epidemic, and viral disease etc.), and operations management (decision making, and risk management). The word cloud of most frequently used keywords was also developed and is presented in Fig. 3.

Table 5.

Top twenty keywords used by the researchers on the SC in COVID-19

Words Occurrences Words Occurrences
Supply chains 103 Supply chain resilience 12
COVID-19 52 Epidemiology 11
Supply chains management 48 Pandemics 11
Pandemic 28 Economics 10
Human 27 Risk management 10
Food supply 24 Food security 9
Coronavirus disease 2019 20 Industry 9
Decision making 16 Supply-chain disruptions 9
Coronavirus 15 Sustainability 9
Epidemic 13 Viral disease 9
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Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

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Word cloud of most frequently used keywords

Network analysis

Network analysis depicts the association between authors, keywords and articles based on their connections or link strengths. Clusters are formed taking the entities which have more connections. From SCOPUS database, ‘.CSV’ file was extracted and was fed to VOS viewer software for network analysis. In this work, network analysis was performed for keywords and bibliometrically coupled articles.

Keyword co-occurrence network

Keyword co-occurrence network was developed by considering keywords that appeared at least three times. Out of 1065 identified keywords, only 92 met the criteria, and thus, the keyword co-occurrence network was developed by considering only these 92 keywords. COVID-19, SC management, pandemic, and resilience were identified as the most networked keywords having 84, 67, 67, and 48 links with other keywords and with total link strength of 409, 216, 183, and 110, respectively. A keyword overlay visualisation network, depicted in Fig. 4, was developed to identify the changing trends of keywords with time.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

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Keyword overlay network

The keyword overlay network shows that the keywords related to the COVID-19 pandemic (coronavirus, human, drug industry, pneumonia, virus pneumonia, healthcare policy etc.) were widespread in the early 2020s when the pandemic really broke out across the globe, whereas supply chain risk management (economic impact, risk management, resiliency, etc.) emerged during the mid of 2020s. Finally, keywords related to supply chain risk mitigation strategies (outbound logistics, procurement, inbound logistics, agile manufacturing, blockchain etc.) are emerging in 2021. This implies that global SC is learning and devising strategies to cope with the ongoing and future pandemics.

Bibliographic coupling for identifying emerging knowledge themes

Bibliographic coupling helps in identifying common knowledge themes among research articles by creating clusters of articles which are connected strongly. When two articles A and B both cite a third common article C in reference, the first two articles i.e., A and B become bibliometrically coupled (Pirri et al. 2020). Unlike co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling does not put recently published articles at a disadvantage as the latter is based on cited references and not on citations. As the temporal span of this review is just last two years, bibliographic coupling was chosen for identifying emerging knowledge themes. Among considered articles in this study, those articles which have received at least two citations were considered for this analysis. So, the count of articles was reduced to 79. From bibliographic coupling analysis, seven clusters were developed, including 61 articles, while other articles were eliminated due to low connectivity in the network. Figure 5 shows that the largest cluster (red) contains 15 articles, followed by cluster 2 (green), cluster 3 (blue), cluster 4 (yellow), cluster 5 (violet), cluster 6 (sky blue), and cluster 7 (orange) which have 13, 12, 9, 7, 3, and 2 articles respectively. Five major knowledge clusters along with their leading articles (based on the number of links) are presented in Table 6. Discussion on these clusters and related knowledge themes are presented in the following section.

Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

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Emerging knowledge themes

Table 6.

Lead articles from the major knowledge themes

Authors Title Year Journal Citation Links TLS Approach
Cluster 1 (Red): Food SC
Chowdhury et al. (2021) “COVID-19 pandemic related supply chain studies: A systematic review.” 2021 Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 14 44 169 Presented a review on COVID-19 in SC. The four major research themes identified were COVID-19 impact on SC, the role of technology in SC, resilience strategies, and sustainability in SC.
Kumar et al. (2021) “Mitigate risks in perishable food supply chains: Learning from COVID-19.” 2021 Technological Forecasting and Social Change 6 34 70 Analysed risk mitigation strategies of perishable food SC in COVID-19 scenario by using the Fuzzy best-worst method (BWM).
Ali et al. (2021) ‘Supply chain resilience reactive strategies for food SMEs in coping to COVID-19 crisis” 2021 Trends in Food Science and Technology 3 23 42 Reviewed SC resiliency strategies for food SC in the COVID-19 scenario.
Kumar and Kumar Singh (2021) ‘Strategic framework for developing resilience in Agri-Food Supply Chains during COVID 19 pandemic” 2021 International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications 3 20 38 Analysed the impact of COVID-19 on agri-food SC by using the BWM. The strategies to improve resilience in agri-food SC were also analysed using quality function deployment.
Aday and Aday (2020) “Impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain” 2020 Food Quality and Safety 37 20 36 Presented a review on the impact of COVID-19 on agri-food SC.
Cluster 2 (Green): Sustainable SC strategies

Nandi et al.

(2021)

 “Do blockchain, and circular economy practices improve post COVID-19 supply chains? A resource-based and resource dependence perspective” 2021 Industrial Management and Data Systems 3 36 109 Recommended adopting circular economy practices and blockchain technologies to enhance the firm’s localisation, agility and digitisation.
Karmaker et al. (2021) “Improving supply chain sustainability in the context of COVID-19 pandemic in an emerging economy: Exploring drivers using an integrated model” 2021 Sustainable Production and Consumption 20 32 87 Analysed the drivers of sustainable SC using fuzzy total interpretive structural modeling. Financial support from the government was found to be the topmost driver to enhance the sustainability of SC.
Qin et al. (2021) “Investigating the effects of COVID-19 and public health expenditure on global supply chain operations: an empirical study” 2021 Operations Management Research 3 28 87 Assessed the impact of COVID-19 on the global SC by using the random effect and fixed effect approaches.
Nikolopoulos et al. (2021) “Forecasting and planning during a pandemic: COVID-19 growth rates, supply chain disruptions, and governmental decisions” 2021 European Journal of Operational Research 26 26 35 Used predictive analytics tools to forecast and plan to overcome the adverse effect of the pandemic. The Deep-learning model was used to forecast the growth rate of COVID-19.
Veselovská (2020) “Supply chain disruptions in the context of early stages of the global COVID-19 outbreak” 2020 Problems and Perspectives in Management 8 23 28 Conducted a survey to analyse disruption in SC by collecting responses. Various measures taken by industries to minimise COVID-19 impact were also discussed.
Cluster 3 (Blue): SC risk mitigation and resilience
Butt (2021) “Strategies to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on supply chain disruptions: a multiple case analysis of buyers and distributors” 2021 International Journal of Logistics Management 4 41 132 Presented the countermeasures taken by distribution firms to tackle disruption in SC caused due to COVID-19. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 senior managers from nine firms to analyse the buying and distribution strategy.
El Baz and Ruel (2021) “Can supply chain risk management practices mitigate the disruption impacts on supply chains’ resilience and robustness? Evidence from an empirical survey in a COVID-19 outbreak era” 2021 International Journal of Production Economics 27 35 112 Analysed the importance of risk management in mitigating the disruption in SC due to COVID-19. A survey was conducted on 470 French firms and followed by structural equation modeling.
Xu et al. (2021) “The compounded effects of COVID-19 pandemic and desert locust outbreak on food security and food supply chain” 2021 Sustainability (Switzerland) 3 29 69 Proposed the reactive and proactive approaches for enhancing the resiliency of food SC.
Ivanov and Dolgui (2020) “Viability of intertwined supply networks: extending the supply chain resilience angles towards survivability. A position paper motivated by COVID-19 outbreak” 2020 International Journal of Production Research 191 29 153 Discussed the viability of the SC network. The integrity of intertwined supply network and viability were presented, and a decision model was proposed for SC viability.
Free and Hecimovic (2021) “Global supply chains after COVID-19: the end of the road for neoliberal globalisation?” 2021 Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 7 22 44 Analysed the drivers of SC vulnerability. A case study of the manufacturing sector was presented to show the global policies for enhancing SC vulnerability.
Cluster 4 (Yellow): Impact of COVID-19 on SC
Singh et al. (2021) “Impact of COVID-19 on logistics systems and disruptions in food supply chain” 2021 International Journal of Production Research 48 36 95 A simulation model was developed for the public distribution system to showcase disruptions in food SC. The proposed simulation model helps in establishing responsive and resilient SC.
Taqi et al. (2020) “Strategies to manage the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the supply chain: Implications for improving economic and social sustainability” 2020 Sustainability (Switzerland) 8 36 70 Identified COVID-19 effect on SC and proposed strategies to mitigate the negative impact of COVID-19. Grey based digraph matrix was used to map the essential strategies.
Farooq et al. (2021) “Supply chain operations management in pandemics: A state-of-the-art review inspired by covid-19” 2021 Sustainability (Switzerland) 3 35 155 Presented a systematic review to identify the challenges in SC during COVID-19 and also explored the strategies to overcome those challenges.
Grida et al. (2020) “Evaluate the impact of COVID-19 prevention policies on supply chain aspects under uncertainty” 2020 Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives 8 25 44 Analysed the prevention policies to deal with COVID-19 disruptions. BWM and TOPSIS were used to prioritise the prevention policies.
Cai and Luo (2020) “Influence of COVID-19 on Manufacturing Industry and Corresponding Countermeasures from Supply Chain Perspective” 2020 Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University (Science) 8 19 21 Analysed the impact of COVID-19 on SC and suggested the countermeasures to overcome those impacts.
Cluster 5 (Violet): Supply chain viability
Ivanov (2021a) “Lean resilience: AURA (Active Usage of Resilience Assets) framework for post-COVID-19 supply chain management” 2021 International Journal of Logistics Management 9 38 242 Proposed an active usage of resilience assets (AURA) model to combat COVID-19 disruptions. The proposed model enhances resiliency and enables value creation.
Ivanov (2021b) “Supply Chain Viability and the COVID-19 pandemic: a conceptual and formal generalisation of four major adaptation strategies” 2021 International Journal of Production Research 9 37 176 Identified the adoption strategies used by industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Four strategies, namely, intertwining, repurposing, substitution, and scalability were discussed.
Golan et al. (2020) “Trends and applications of resilience analytics in supply chain modeling: systematic literature review in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic” 2020 Environment Systems and Decisions 48 36 108 Presented a review on SC resiliency. Several future research directions were proposed to enhance the resiliency of SC.
Shahed et al. (2021) “A supply chain disruption risk mitigation model to manage COVID-19 pandemic risk” 2021 Environmental Science and Pollution Research 5 29 68 Used two algorithms, namely, genetic algorithm and pattern search, to propose a mathematical model to mitigate the disruptions in the SC.
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Knowledge-based supply chain: Emerging themes

This section deals with the RQ2 by elucidating the emerging knowledge themes in of SC research in COVID-19. The clusters identified through bibliographic coupling were named after studying the articles under each cluster and assimilating the common theme among them. These are: cluster 1-food SC, cluster 2- sustainable SC strategies, cluster 3- SC risk mitigation and resilience, cluster 4- impact of COVID-19 on SC, and cluster 5- SC viability.

Food supply chains

Food and nutrition is the most essential aspect of life and therefore, it plays a crucial role in the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Globally one among nine people suffer from hunger and thus, it is a serious concern for every nation (Nordhagen et al. 2021). Ensuring the reachability of proper food and nutrition to all human beings should be the prime motto of food SC. In this regard, a simulation model for the distribution system was presented by Singh et al. (2021) to analyse the disruptions in food SC during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, the current food SC was analysed by Mor et al. (2020) based on the available reports and predicted the future performance of food SC in the post-COVID-19 scenario. The risk-mitigating strategies of perishable food SC were analysed by Kumar et al. (2021) using the fuzzy BWM. Collaborative management was identified as the top food SC strategy for risk mitigation. Further, the impact of COVID-19 on agri-food SC was analysed by Kumar and Kumar Singh (2021) and explored the potential strategies to enhance the resiliency of agri-food SC. Chenarides et al. (2021) proposed a flexible SC model that enhances stakeholders’ value by improving the flexibility across the SC. Lastly, a survey on 367 agri-food industries was presented by Nordhagen et al. (2021) to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on agri-food SC. The survey showed that 94.3% of the firms reported that their SC was heavily affected, and the sales were also decreased.

Sustainable supply chain strategies

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the SC and its long-term sustainability (DeWit et al. 2020). The achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) has become questionable because of SC disruptions (Alam et al. 2021; Karuppiah et al. 2021). Therefore, firms need to revisit their existing SC strategies to minimise disruptions from COVID-19. Some researchers suggested that short-term reactive strategies must be adopted to handle disruptions effectively (Butt 2021). Several researchers have suggested that agile production, flexibility in manufacturing, and diversification of supplies sources as potential strategies to deal with disruptions in SC due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Taqi et al. 2020; Butt 2021). The challenges associated with the vaccine SC were analysed using the fuzzy-based DEMATEL method (Alam et al. 2021). The study reveals that a limited number of vaccine manufacturing firms and inappropriate coordination were the topmost challenges in vaccine SC. The lack of social sustainability in the SC of clothing industries was also discussed (Majumdar et al. 2020). The authors reveal that the dominant power of some brands is the main reason for the lack of social sustainability. Also, the unauthorised sub-contracting in the clothing industry is a critical issue for lack of social sustainability. Sharma, Luthra, et al. (2020c) proposed a framework to improve the survivability of sustainable SC in the post-COVID-19 scenario. The study analyses the factors affecting the survivability of sustainable SC using the SWARA method and found that SC network viability is the main driving factor in enhancing the survivability of sustainable SC. The impact of COVID-19 on the environment, economy, and society was analysed by Yu et al. (2021). The study also identified the remedial measures to deal with disruption in SC from COVID-19. Anser et al. (2021) analysed the critical factors that affect the sustainable SC in COVID-19. Karuppiah et al. (2021) analysed the challenges of COVID-19 in the humanitarian SC using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The result reveals that the humanitarian SC’s top challenges were short lead time, emergency service, and spread of rumours.

Supply chain risk mitigation and resilience

Hosseini and Ivanov (2020, 2021) proposed a multi-layer Bayesian model to identify the deviations and to quantify the consequences of disruptions happening in the SC due to COVID-19 pandemic. To cope with such disruptions, three dimensions of SC resilience, namely absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity, and restorative capacity was identified (Hosseini et al. 2019, 2022). Multiple sourcing, geographical separation of suppliers etc. contribute to the absorptive capacity while rerouting enhances the adaptive capacity. Restorative capacity implies the ability of the physical facilities to return to the original state after disruption. It depends on the available protection to the physical facilities and financial capacity of the organisation to fund the restoration work.

Risk mitigation and SC resilience have emerged as a dominant knowledge theme during the COVID-19 pandemic. The two major resilience strategies, namely preposition of extra inventory and backup suppliers were also suggested for enhancing the resilience in SC (Moosavi and Hosseini 2021). A mathematical model was presented to minimise disruptions in SC from both supplier and retailer sides due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Shahed et al. 2021). Further, Sid et al. (2021) analysed the short and long-term impact of COVID-19 on the agri-food SC. Detailed analysis on the remedial strategies was conducted to minimise the disruptions in SC. A review on disruptions in SC due to the COVID-19 pandemic was presented by Pujawan and Bah (2021). El Baz and Ruel (2021) surveyed 470 French firms to analysed the risk management in SC to mitigate the disruptions that happened due to COVID-19 using structural equation modelling. Al-Mansour and Al-Ajmi (2020) discussed the implications of COVID-19 on the business strategies and suggested firms revisit business strategies to tackle the disruptions from COVID-19. Simulation models were developed to analyse the exit strategies of SC to combat COVID-19 (Ivanov 2021c). The proposed simulation model helps in the selection of relevant recovery strategies for COVID-19 after effect. Nikolopoulos et al. (2021) forecasted the growth of the COVID-19 pandemic using a deep learning model, which helps in enhancing the production planning to combat COVID-19 disruptions. The countermeasure strategies adopted by distribution firms to minimise disruptions in SC were analysed by Butt (2021).

Impact of COVID-19 on supply chain

The COVID-19 pandemic has a disastrous impact on most of the supply chains, including automobile, hospitality, aviation etc. (Aigbedo 2021; Belhadi et al. 2021). To minimise COVID-19 impact, the government has taken several precautionary measures such as regional and country-wide lockdown, travel restrictions, and shutdown of various facilities. This step has disrupted SC heavily. In this regard, the effects of SC on economic growth during the pandemic were analysed by collecting data from 130 nations (Goel et al. 2021). Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI-ML) were seen as affecting technologies to minimise SC disruptions, so the challenges in implementing AI-ML techniques in agriculture SC were analysed using an interpretive structural modelling approach (Nayal et al. 2021). It is found that lack of regulations and data security were the topmost challenges in adopting AI-ML techniques in SC. The impact of COVID-19 was analysed in the literature, and firms’ remedial measures to combat disruptions in SC were also analysed Sharma, Adhikary, et al. (2020a). Further, the impact of COVID-19 in Flemish food SC was also analysed (Coopmans et al. 2021). Many organisations are adopting remedial policies to cope up with damages in SC due to COVID-19. The impact of these remedial policies on the SC was analysed by Grida et al. (2020) using BWM. The impact of COVID-19 on customer satisfaction was analysed by Brandtner et al. (2021) and found a decrease in customer satisfaction due to pandemics.

Supply chain viability

The COVID-19 has affected human lives, business, and other economic activities such as manufacturing, tourism, and hospitality. This uninterrupted SC has led to delay in deliveries, unpredicted demands, and panic buying (Yuen et al. 2021). It is essential to improve the viability and resiliency of SC to handle these disruptions and challenges faced in the current pandemic. Supply chain viability is defined as “the ability of a supply chain (SC) to maintain itself and survive in a changing environment through a redesign of structures and replanning of performance with long-term impacts” (Ivanov 2020b). The ripple effect of the COVID-19 outbreak was modelled by Ivanov and Das (2020) considering pandemic propagation, market disruption, and declination in demand. Innovations and technology integration in SC generates a competitive advantage. However, the resiliency in the SC may not be enhanced through these innovations and technology integration, and resiliency must be enhanced through adaptive capacity and redundancy in the SC (Golan et al. 2020). A minor delay in any project activity may disrupt the whole network, leading to project resilience, and that’s why the disruption caused during the COVID-19 pandemic damaged the SC activities severely (Golan et al. 2020). Further, Four strategies, namely, intertwining, repurposing, substitution, and scalability, were proposed and discussed (Ivanov 2021b) to enhance the viability and resiliency of SC.

Discussion

This study intends to analyse the impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic on SC and how the SC players are learning to cope with this unprecedented disruption by devising various strategies and practices. It is pertinent to mention here that COVID-19 is a high-impact but low-probability event that requires distinct strategies compared to low-impact and high-probability disruptions like natural calamity, supply shortages, demand fluctuations etc. The lean strategies revolving around minimisation of inventory and Just in Time (JIT) philosophy results good efficiency, however, at the cost of SC resilience. Therefore, incorporating resilience in SC to tame pandemic disruptions needs adoption of new philosophies rooted in knowledge-based systems and practices.

Research on the impact of COVID-19 on SC gained tremendous momentum from the early 2020s. The trend of research is also found to be highly dynamic as it migrated from COVID-19 pandemic-related issues in early 2020 to SC risk management in mid-2020 and then to risk mitigation strategies in 2021. Among various supply chains, food and pharmaceutical supply chain have received most of the attention from the researchers.

Knowledge-based strategies for SC resilience

This section deals with the RQ3. Studies showed that the disruption impact of COVID-19 varies based on the complexity of the SC network, such as the number of entities in SC, information and product flows etc. So, it is essential to consider network complexity while devising strategies to cope with the impact of COVID-19 in SC (Duong and Chong 2020). COVID-19 has uncovered the vulnerabilities of lean and efficient SCs. The unrelenting focus on the cost and efficiency has led to the creation of supply chains without the desired flexibility and redundancy. This has worked well when the business environment is stable and predictable. However, disruption from COVID-19 has created renewed attention towards integrating resiliency in SC.

While building resilience through absorptive and adaptive capacities has been suggested by some researchers, others have propounded strategies like ‘glocalisation’, i.e., amalgamation of globalisation and localisation in the context of procurement (Sarkis et al. 2020). The development of local suppliers not only reduces the dependence on suppliers located in other geographic locations but also shortens the length of the SC. However, monitoring of not only the tier-1 supplier, but also of tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers on a regular basis has been prescribed as a part of supplier management during the pandemic. It has become important to know the capacity, redundancy, and lead time at every echelon of the SC network. Strategic sourcing that not only ensures minimum cost but also takes care of quality, responsiveness, collaboration, timely delivery etc. has also been accepted by the SC practitioners as an effective way to improve the SC performance during disruptions (Frederico et al., 2021). As strategic sourcing improves the agility and responsiveness of SC, it helps to augment the resilience. Irrespective of natural disaster that happens only to a specific location/area, the COVID-19 has impacted the world. Almost all countries were impacted, and it has led to overall disruption in SC internationally. There is a need to revise the strategies of SC to enhance its resilience. One such option to enhance the resilience in SC is adoption of digital technologies that helps in quick recovery and foresight seen of future pandemics.

Use of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and blockchain can help in smooth monitoring of suppliers (Linton and Bidiya 2020; Nayal et al. 2021). Development of SC digital twin (Burgos and Ivanov 2021), that mimics the physical SC with a computerised model representing the state of network at any given moment in real time by two way information transfer, can be a very potent strategy way to handle disruptions created by pandemics. In this context L-A-D framework (localization-agility-digitization) can really augment the blockchain enabled circular economy adoption in SC in the post COVID-19 era (Nandi et al. 2021). Using the dynamic big data and SC mapping, stress testing can be done under simulated conditions to understand the effect of disruption at one stage of SC on the survivability of the entire network. Based on the ongoing discussion, a framework relating knowledge-based SC and resilience is proposed as shown in Fig. 6. This simple framework illustrates that the use of AI and ML, adoption of blockchain and SC digitisation will lead to knowledge-based supply chain which in turn will augment the SC resilience.

Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

Open in a new tab

Framework relating knowledge-based SC with resilience

The strategies like SC viability propounded by Burgos and Ivanov (2021) and Ivanov (2020b) have attracted the attention of the research fraternity. The SC viability defined as “the ability of a SC to maintain itself and survive in a changing environment through a redesign of structures and replanning of performance with long-term impacts” integrate three philosophies of supply chain, namely agility, resilience and sustainability through a multi-structural (organisation, information, technology, process-function, finance etc.) framework. Therefore, a viable SC should respond with agility to quick changes and also absorb negative impacts of disruptions and recover quickly from it showing resilience. Viability will also require adjustment of capacity utilisation and allocation during long term global disruptions to meet the sustainability goals. Some studies suggested restructuring of SC networks by considering reshoring and nearshoring. However, the challenges associated with SC reconstruction are still largely unexplored (Deaton and Deaton 2020).

Agile and flexible manufacturing and quick repurposing have also been proposed as potent strategies to build resilience. Many manufacturing companies have changed their manufacturing facilities to serve a different product line which not only helped them to maintain their revenue but also to serve the society in a better way (Belhadi et al. 2021). In India, some of the major textile and clothing manufacturers have ventured into the manufacturing of masks and personal protective equipment (PPE) by quickly modifying their production lines and by augmenting the capacities for the new products. Many authors have argued in favour of enhancing the sustainability of SC post-COVID-19 disruptions by adopting both short-term and long-term strategies. Short-term strategies to minimise the immediate disruption and long-term strategies to enhance the sustainability of SC to deal with future pandemics. Some of the initiatives suggested by researchers are the adoption of blockchain technology in SC, usage of predictive analytics in demand management, and financial support from the government to enhance the sustainability of the SC.

Managerial implications

This review on SC in COVID-19 provides various knowledge-based avenues to improve SC resiliency for tackling the current and future disruptions. The strategies to be adopted by the SC managers are going to be crucial for the viability of the SC. This work presents a compendium of supply chain issues, knowledge themes, and mitigation strategies which will help the practicing managers to take a more informed decision while handling pandemic disruptions.

Besides, the insights gained from this literature review will help the managers to systematically analyse the critical challenges faced by SC in the current pandemic and also poke them to reflect on the counter strategies, discussed in section 6, to minimise the disruptions in SC. Adopting sustainable practices will enhance the viability and resiliency of the SC and will also help to deal with sudden disruptions or market shifts. These strategies should be a balanced mix of short-term and long-term initiatives. Short-term strategies are needed during sudden disruptions to minimise their immediate effect, whereas long-term strategies are helpful for the post-pandemic recovery and sustainable growth of SC. Various AI and ML based predictive and prescriptive analytics tools should be embraced by the SC managers to cope with the demand fluctuation and uncertainty in supply during pandemic. Proactive managers should develop data-driven supply chain models for simulated stress testing to identify the critical nodes that may cause disruption. More attention should be given and adequate resource allocation should be made by the managers to make these critical nodes robust and absorptive. Overall, the practitioners and managers must revisit their operations strategies to cope with the present pandemic and to deal with future pandemics.

Research implications

This review identifies various knowledge-based strategies to enhance the SC resilience during pandemic. The insights gained from this review will help the researchers to reflect on and to develop resilient strategies to mitigate such disruptions. Strong emphasis is needed on researches related to supply chain digitisation and the use of artificial intelligence so that end to end visibility in SC is obtained and automated decisions can be taken in case of unprecedented deviations in demand, supply or schedules. A detailed elaboration of future research directions is presented in the following section.

Future research directions

In the last two years, the research on SC in COVID-19 has received significant attention from the SC and risk research communities. This is mainly due to the unprecedented and deleterious effects of COVID-19 on SC. Looking at the severe impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, researchers and practitioners are shifting their focus towards knowledge-based SC to improve the resiliency and long-term viability. The key question that the researchers are trying to answer is what is the optimum balance between the SC efficiency and SC resiliency? Too much focus on leanness has definitely pushed the resiliency to the back seat. Therefore, COVID-19 has become an eye-opener for the researchers, and it has compelled them to ponder over the issue of integrating resilience in the SC using knowledge-based platforms and technologies. Therefore, the new research paradigm should focus on the development of a sustainable-leagile-resilient (S-leagilient) SC which will not only meet the triple bottom line but also fulfil the lean, agile, and resiliency dimensions. Achieving all these dimensions may seem paradoxical, however, a logical balance of these dimensions can definitely be achieved. The following research propositions are propounded for future research:

  • Proposition 1: Analysing the short-term and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on SC and developing knowledge-based counter strategies for mitigation.

  • Proposition 2: Incorporating AI, ML and blockchain based digital technologies to create digital twins for enhancing the resiliency of SC.

  • Proposition 3: Developing a unified framework for a knowledge based sustainable-leagile-resilient supply chain leading to supply chain viability.

Conclusion

This article presents an overview of SC research trends, knowledge themes, and strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic through bibliometric and network analyses. Bibliometric analysis shows that the research in this area started at the fag end of 2019, however, it exploded in the following two years. The keywords, an important indicator of knowledge themes, revolve around three facets, namely SC issues, COVID-19 related issues, and operations management related issues. The five dominant knowledge themes elicited through bibliographic coupling are food SC, sustainable SC strategies, SC risk mitigation and resilience, impact of COVID-19 on SC, and SC viability. The present literature review also deliberate on the knowledge-based counter strategies that are being adopted by the firms to tackle the current pandemic and to enhance the resiliency of SC. Glocalisation, monitoring of sub-suppliers, adoption of digital technologies (digital twins), L-A-D (localization-agility-digitization), SC viability, SC stress testing etc. are some of the knowledge-based strategies and best practices suggested in contemporary literature to cope with the present and future pandemic disruptions.

This article contributes by mapping the knowledge-based SC research in COVID-19 using bibliometric and network analyses. Though the research outputs in this area are increasing at an exponential rate, there is a lacuna in terms of summarising this contemporary research through network analysis and delineating the future strategies for a new SC paradigm. This review presents a compendium of trends and emerging knowledge themes with special focus on disruption mitigation strategies. The several counter strategies taken by the researchers and industrial practitioners to tackle COVID-19 disruptions in SC are succinctly discussed. Finally, this review highlights that there exists a need to develop a unified framework for a knowledge-based sustainable leagilient SC.

The study only includes the research articles covered in the SCOPUS database, and conference papers, policy documents, and research reports do not come under the purview of this study. Moreover, this study does not focus on any particular supply chain which may require in-depth analysis through systematic literature review.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on request.

Declarations

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

The authors have no financial or proprietary.

Footnotes

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Abhijit Majumdar, Email: majumdar@textile.iitd.ac.in.

Rohit Agrawal, Email: mailerrohit@gmail.com.

Rakesh D. Raut, Email: rraut@nitie.ac.in

Balkrishna E. Narkhede, Email: benarkhede@nitie.ac.in

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on request.

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