A Practice-oriented Modelling Approach to Enhance the Resilience of Reconfigurable Supply Networks

The need for effective absorptive, adaptive, restorative and transformative strategies to build resilience with enhanced supply network performance has been identified as a critical research need, as many of the available strategies tend to be organization-oriented and often require substantial investment, highlighting the need for more cost-effective, network-wide approaches. Resilience in supply chains refers to their ability to anticipate, absorb and recover from disruptions while maintaining core functions and adapting to emerging challenges. An emerging proposition reported in the literature to enhance supply network resilience is reconfigurable supply networks. The networks are characterized by their modularity, flexibility and adaptability, which help them dynamically adjust the structure, processes and resources in responding to changes in the external environment. To advance the notion of reconfigurable supply networks, this paper proposes a multi-agent optimisation model. As part of this model, auctioning-based communication and coordination protocols are implemented to drive organisational decisions and achieve the expected supply network level performance. A refrigerator supply network is used to evaluate the model under baseline conditions, which are then subject to scenario analysis to account for supply network conditions. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed model in making supply network configuration decisions that help in multiple ways to build supply network resilience.