Slim Zidi

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed weaknesses in the global supply chain management. With stock-outs, transportation problems and the bullwhip effect caused by ever-changing demand, it is necessary for decision-makers to review their supply chain configuration. The latter must adapt to new market changes and respond quickly and cost-effectively to customer requirements. In fact, the selection criteria of the most reconfigurable configuration, i.e., the configuration that adapts its structure and its functions to the new market changes, must respond to this problem. The aim of this paper is to conduct a literature review of the criteria and methods for configuration selection in reconfigurable manufacturing systems and reconfigurable supply chains. This study allows to define a roadmap for the configuration selection in reconfigurable supply chains based on the most efficient reconfigurability criteria. We provide new trends to consider in this selection problem. This paper allows managers to choose the most appropriate criteria to implement a reconfigurable supply chain.

The reconfiguration of supply chain is becoming a crucial concept used to deal with market disruptions and changes such as the COVID-19 pandemic, demand uncertainty, and new technologies. It can be defined as the ability of the supply chain to change its structure and functions in order to adapt to new changes. Its assessment requires an understanding of its quantitative factors to provide indicators that are easy to interpret. Effective reconfigurability assessment can be achieved by measuring quantitatively its six characteristics (modularity, integrability, convertibility, diagnosability, scalability, and customization). This paper aims at identifying the quantitative factors of each characteristic and their inter-relationships by using Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (TISM). The structural model obtained by TISM is applied to understand the dependency quantitative factors. Based on TISM results, a classification of quantitative factors is determined using “Matrice d′Impacts Croisés, Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement” (MICMAC) analysis. This article provides a better understanding of the six characteristics previously mentioned to improve the reconfigurability of supply chains by considering the interactions between their factors. Thus, this analysis helps managers to understand the characteristics that influence the change of the supply chain structure and those that enable changing the supply chain functions in order to optimize the supply chain reconfiguration process.

In an increasingly changing and uncertain market, adapting the supply chain to new changes requires reconfiguring supply chains processes to improve its performance. The decision-making process for the reconfiguration of supply chains must take into consideration the uncertainty and imprecision related to the judgments of the decision-makers. This paper deals with uncertainty in the decision-making process of supply chain reconfiguration using the Dempster-Shafer theory. An approach to reconfigure supply chain business processes under uncertainty is also proposed to improve the decision-making process for supply chain reconfiguration. The reconfiguration of the supply chain involves selecting the most appropriate configuration, process, actor and role that should be reconfigured in advance in order to optimise the reconfiguration using the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. To reduce the imprecision and uncertainty related to the judgments and preferences of the decision-makers, the Dempster-Shafer theory is applied and, to validate the introduced approach, a case study is conducted.

The reconfiguration of supply chain is becoming a crucial concept used to deal with market disruptions and changes such as COVID 19 pandemic, demand uncertainty, new technologies, etc. It can be defined as the ability of the supply chain to change its structure and functions in order to adapt to new changes. Its assessment requires an understanding of its quantitative factors to provide indicators that are easy to interpret. Effective reconfigurability assessment can be achieved by measuring quantitatively its six characteristics (modularity, integrability, convertibility, diagnosability, scalability and customization). This paper aims at identifying the quantitative factors of each characteristic and their inter-relationships by using Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (TISM). The structural model obtained by TISM is applied to understand the dependency quantitative factors. Based on TISM results, a classification of quantitative factors is determined using « Matrice d'Impacts Croisés, Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement » (MICMAC) analysis. This paper may be helpful to understand the previously mentioned characteristics of reconfigurable supply chain in order to facilitate the measuring and the assessment of reconfigurability.