The Ripple effect in supply chains: trade-off ‘efficiency-flexibility-resilience’ in disruption management

TLDR

The study presents the Ripple effect in supply chains and proposes an agenda to make supply chains more robust, adaptable, and profitable. The authors develop dimensions of the Ripple effect, summarize multidisciplinary disruption‑management developments, classify research streams and quantitative methods, and identify gaps to guide future research. Existing frameworks implicitly address the Ripple effect, yet quantitative tools are rarely applied; the Ripple effect could unify SC disruption‑management research similarly to the bullwhip effect.

Abstract

This study aims at presenting the Ripple effect in supply chains. It develops different dimensions of the Ripple effect and summarises recent developments in the field of supply chain (SC) disruption management from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It structures and classifies existing research streams and applications areas of different quantitative methods to the Ripple effect analysis as well as identifying gaps in current research and delineating future research avenues. The analysis shows that different frameworks already exist implicitly for tackling the Ripple effect in the SC dynamics, control and disruption management domain. However, quantitative analysis tools are still rarely applied in praxis. We conclude that the Ripple effect can be the phenomenon that is able to consolidate research in SC disruption management and recovery similar to the bullwhip effect regarding demand and lead time fluctuations. This may build the agenda for future research on SC dynamics, control, continuity and disruption management, making supply chains more robust, adaptable and profitable.