Analysis of ripple effect and its impact on supply chain resilience: a general framework and a case study on agri-food supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic

Vulnerabilities and disruptions that are localized in a specific company can lead to consequences along with the entire supply chain, snowballing in magnitude and causing a resilience loss. This study proposes a methodology to unveil the causal relationships that occur among different factors as a result of a disruption and how these causal relationships strengthen or weaken supply chain resilience. This methodology is based on fuzzy cognitive maps capability to link multidimensional and multidisciplinary factors together, providing supply chain managers with a graph structure for understanding the system behaviour. The proposed methodology is applied to a case study in order to explain the research approach and show how the implementation of the fuzzy cognitive maps can provide valuable support in defining casual reactions that generate resilience variations. In particular, an agri-food supply chain is analysed taking into consideration as a disruption the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 60 principal paths (ripple effects) and 6 cycles influencing agri-food supply chain resilience have been exemplified, highlighting how “Long shelf-life food demand”, “Closure of the Ho.Re.Ca. channel” factors are critical into influencing supply chain resilience. Other results reveal how “panic buying” can instead strengthen agri-food Supply Chain Resilience. The proposed methodology has shown its generality as a holistic approach in the analysis of all type of disruptions in a supply chain.