Impacts of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains: Facts and Perspectives

TLDR

The COVID‑19 pandemic has severely disrupted raw‑material, intermediate, and finished‑product supply, compromising the robustness of global supply chains that had previously shown resilience. This article investigates how COVID‑19 has affected the effectiveness and responsiveness of global supply chains and proposes managerial insights to mitigate risks and enhance resilience. The authors employ a critical reading and causal analysis of facts and figures to examine these impacts and develop the proposed insights. The analysis reveals unprecedented, end‑to‑end disruptions across manufacturing, processing, transport, and logistics, and identifies strengthening supply‑chain resilience—particularly through shorter, back‑shored networks—as the key driver to reduce vulnerability.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused considerable damage to various industries worldwide. Availability and supply of a wide range of raw materials, intermediate goods, and finished products have been seriously disrupted. Global supply chains (GSCs), which had shown a high level of robustness and resiliency against several disruptions in recent decades, are genuinely compromised. Using a critical reading and a causal analysis of facts and figures, this article aims to investigate the COVID-19 impacts on the effectiveness and responsiveness of GSCs and to propose a set of managerial insights to mitigate their risks and enhance their resilience in various industrial sectors. The study showed that the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented disruptions to the mechanics of most GSCs such as pharmaceuticals, food, electronics, automotive industry, etc. Unlike previous major disruptions, COVID-19 has adversely affected GSCs throughout all their stages with major turbulences in manufacturing, processing, transport, and logistics, as well as significant shifts in demand. The analysis pinpointed that enhancing the supply chain resilience is the main key driver to reducing vulnerability in disruptive times. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that the post-COVID-19 GSCs will tend to be shorter through revamped strategies focusing more and more on relocations and back-shoring.