Using simulation to support the resilience of supply chain

Supply chains (SCs) are subject to disturbances that frequently implies a loss of their performance. Avoiding such disturbances or reducing their negative effects, i.e. developing resilience, is a challenge for SC managers. SC resilience can be achieved by implementing mitigation strategies, mostly based on redundancy and/or flexibility. However, to improve something it is necessary to measure it. To support the SC resilience decision making process a simulation model was developed to create different scenarios. A case study approach was used to evaluate the resilience of a SC comprising a sub-set of companies belonging to the Portuguese automotive industry. In the case study, the SC is subjected to a transportation disturbance and two scenarios are considered: in the first one a mitigation strategy based on flexibility was implemented and in the second scenario no resilience strategy was considered. In each scenario the SC behaviour was assessed using a model based on the "resilience triangle". The fulfilment rate measure was used to quantify the resilience of each company and respective SC. Finally, a comparative analysis is done regarding the SC resilience of each scenario.