Kamar Zekhnini

Purpose: In today's dynamic environment, Industrial Metaverse Technology (IMT) promises to enhance supply chain resilience (SCR) by optimizing operations and building adaptability. Also, it can help generate economic value by enabling firms to sustain performance under disruptions, minimize their costs engaged for recovery and reconfigure the supply chain (SC) capabilities to achieve long-term continuity. In this context, this study explores the potential of IMT in maintaining the adaptive, restorative and absorptive core capacities of the SCR while considering SC complexity. Design/methodology/approach: It introduces a three-dimensional framework for SCR while considering the dynamic capabilities view (DCV) and complex adaptive systems (CAS) theories. The framework is empirically validated using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the developed hypotheses and evaluate the power of IMT in ensuring SCR under SC complexity based on data from experts. Findings: The findings reveal that the IMT has the potential to design effective absorptive and adaptive capacities to build robust SCs, capable of resisting negative impacts associated with extreme disruptions. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the needed digital-dynamic capabilities (DDC) of IMT that can be implemented to anticipate potential disruptions and adjust the firm's core capacities to resist, respond and recover from similar events. Originality/value: Grounded on the CAS and DCV theories, this study challenges the static view that considers SCR as a reactive capability only by showing that digital capabilities offering visibility, proactiveness and adaptability are important for dealing with disruptions and ensuring a desired level of resilience through the reconfiguration of the SC capabilities. Furthermore, it argues that understanding the facets of SC complexity would help firms identify their critical issues and vulnerabilities, allowing for an effective design of digital transformation through the IMT to achieve resilience and higher economic value for industrial firms.

The automotive supply chain (ASC) in Northern Africa faces many challenges related to traceability, trust deficits, data integrity, heavy workloads and intermediary involvement in its sourcing process (SP). These challenges can hinder this process’s efficiency and sustainability while sourcing suitable suppliers for the supply chain (SC). Thus, digitalization stands as a powerful facilitator in managing complex processes and blockchain technology (BT) is promoted to effectively address similar issues. In this regard, this article aims to build a smart SP model guided by lean practices and green principles using BT and smart contracts to achieve operational excellence (OE) in the automotive SP in the Northern Africa context. To do so, this study conducts interviews with experts to investigate contextual issues and identify the main challenges faced by the current automotive SP. Then, it proposes the smart SP as a solution for these challenges. The proposed solution uses an algorithmic approach to develop the smart contract algorithms for six sub-processes of the smart SP. Furthermore, the study offers multiple business implications on the digitalization of the SP to reduce higher workloads of the sourcing team, cost related to intermediary elimination and decentralized data management to deal with integrity, traceability and trust challenges while searching for potential partners.

Purpose: Under a rapidly changing and disruptive environment, the need for resilient, sustainable and survival-oriented performances is currently urgent. To deal with these challenges, the reconfigurable capabilities of blockchain technology (BT) can support supply chains (SC) to be resilient and survive during disruptions while maintaining sustainability goals. Through the lens of the dynamic capability view (DCV), this study aims to investigate the impact of adopting the dynamic capabilities of BT to achieve the resilient–sustainable–survival (RSS) paradigm under a disruptive context.Design/methodology/approach: This study follows the DCV to develop theoretical hypotheses and adopts structural equation modeling to examine and analyze the impact of BT’s capabilities on the triple aspects of the RSS paradigm. It uses the partial least squares technique to evaluate the weight of the correlations among the constructs, test the dependencies of its relationships and assess the model’s power for predicting the outcome variables.Findings: Based on the empirical evidence from the manufacturing and assembling SCs, this study provides insights into the interplay of the sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities of BT, and the most needed ones to fit the expectations of the RSS model. It shows that such capabilities can have a significant impact and can be a powerful tool that contributes to the enhancement of the RSS’s aspects in SC networks.Originality/value: This study represents one of the initial queries to conceptualize the RSS model of the SC within a disruptive context. For researchers, it adds more understanding of the deployment of the DCV in the technology adoption area. For practitioners, it helps identify the capabilities of BT and their potential to fit the expectations for the RSS paradigm.

Purpose: Under the current untrusted business environment, digital technologies, such as blockchain technology (BT), show the potential to digitally transform SC processes particularly the sourcing process (SP). Indeed, this process suffers from a lack of digitalization, a lack of trust and a high workload in the automotive supply chain (ASC). Therefore, BT coupled with smart contracts can deal with such issues by fostering trust, transparency, reliability and traceability as a digital solution. Design/methodology/approach: This paper conducts multiple case studies in the automotive sector and interviews 11 managers from two firms. It follows the managers’ perspective to identify and analyze the main issues that occurred while conducting this process using the existing technology. Findings: It proposes a new architecture for the smart sourcing process (SSP) that uses BT & smart contracts to mitigate the identified issues, enable traceability, improve resilience, eliminate intermediaries, automate tasks, and enhance trust and data management. Also, the paper provides a decision tree to help determine which blockchain platform is needed for adopting the SSP solution. Practical implications: This study is useful for both academics and practitioners as it demonstrates the digitalization of one of the SC processes using BT and smart contracts, as well as develops a roadmap for digitalizing the SP of the ASC, and solves its vulnerabilities. Originality/value: BT has been used by researchers to digitalize the sourcing process only in the public procurement area. Considering all the faced challenges by the private procurement area, this paper aims to present a new architecture for the digitalization of the SP using BT and smart contracts in the ASC as a private SC.

Purpose: This article aims to assess risks related to the supply chain 5.0 digitalization. It aims to analyze interdependencies and causal relationships between critical digital supply chain 5.0 risks, emphasizing the need for proactive management to address emerging challenges.Design/methodology/approach: Through an extensive literature review and expert judgment, risks related to supply chain 5.0 digitalization are identified. An integrated approach for risk assessment is employed, where the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is utilized to prioritize these risks. Subsequently, the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method is employed to investigate cause-and-effect relationships among the identified top 10 risks. This comprehensive analysis forms the basis for informed strategic management decision-making.Findings: The analysis identifies significant influences of “Dependence on technology,” “Complexity”, “Potential system failures”, and “Cyber security” while “Environmental impact” and “Socio-economic disparities” emerge as prominent risks in supply chain 5.0 digitalization. These findings offer actionable insights for management decision-making, guiding the formulation of strategies to address and mitigate critical risks.Practical implications: The proposed integrated approach (AHP-DEMATEL) provides valuable insights for managers to effectively mitigate digital supply chain 5.0 risks and strategically respond to disruptions. By prioritizing risks, organizations can allocate resources efficiently and address the most critical challenges first, minimizing long-term damage to resilience. Embracing this approach enables practitioners to enhance overall supply chain resilience, guiding key management decisions for the development of sustainable and adaptive strategies.Originality/value: This paper marks the first comprehensive attempt to assess supply chain 5.0 digitalization risks using decision-making methods like AHP and DEMATEL. The integrated approach contributes novel insights to the field of supply chain risk management, specifically aiding management decision-making in the face of digitalization challenges.

Digital agility is a critical dynamic capability that is becoming increasingly important in the context of collaborative product development processes (PDPs). This paper aims to address the complexity of today's PDPs by considering various quality aspects including safety, environment, and the entire lifecycle, along with diverse dynamic capabilities such as digital agility and circular economy. The authors employed a semantic web methodology and created an ontology-based knowledge model. The proposed ontology uses Design for X techniques, circular economy, digital agility, and the semantic web under the PDP perspective to increase performance and cooperation between designers and the project team. To validate the ontology, measures for domain ontology evaluation have been used. The paper presents a detailed guide for ontology engineering and evaluation for collaborative smart PDP, which incorporates digital agility as a critical dynamic capability. The proposed ontology can help boost PDP performance and increase customer satisfaction.

Purpose: Blockchain technology (BT) is creating a new standard for all business operations. It can assist businesses in handling the complexity of circular digital supply chain (DCM) management. Despite this optimistic view, several barriers hinder its implementation. In this regard, this study contributes to Industry 4.0, circular economy (CE), the viability with a critical emphasis on its potential ramifications and influence on the future agenda while using BT technology in the supply chain (SC). In addition, the research reduces the knowledge gap by investigating and ranking the key barriers to the deployment of BT in viable circular digital supply chains (VCDSCs) and studies their interdependencies and causal relationships. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.Design/methodology/approach: The barriers to BT adoption in the VCDSC are identified through a thorough literature review and considering viability performance. These barriers are then classified using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is then employed to examine the cause/effect, correlation, and connection among the 14 barriers selected barriers from the AHP classification to estimate each barrier's overall degree of impact over the others.Findings: This paper identifies and analyzes the BT adoption barriers in the VCDSC as well as examines how the key barriers interact. As a result, according to the AHP/DEMATEL method, the most prominent influencing barriers to the BT implementation in the VCDSC are “Data transparency,” “Market competition,” “Missing infrastructure,” “Lack of standardization,” “Complex protocol,” “Lack of industry involvement,” “Financial constraints,” “Missing infrastructure,” “Data transparency” and “Interoperability.” The outcomes offer a potential path for identifying important barriers as well as insight into the implementation of BT in the SC while integrating different capabilities such as viability, sustainability and CE principles.Practical implications: Managers and researchers will benefit from this research by gaining an understanding of the challenges that must be prioritized and examined for BT to be implemented successfully in the VCDSC.Originality/value: The use and implementation of blockchain-enabled VCDSC continue to face challenges despite an increase in relevant practice and research. Despite the benefits of BT, managers struggle to apply such technology in the context of their company. In this respect, this paper uses an integrated AHP–DEMATEL for categorizing the BT barriers as well as the interrelationship between them. In this respect, this paper presents the BT barriers studied are those related to the use of BT in the SC while integrating different paradigms such as viability, digitalization and CE. While many studies look at the barriers to BT adoption; none of them has ever included the viable capability, which means the ability to “react agilely to positive changes, be resilient to absorb negative events and re-cover after disruptions and survive at long-term periods.” The study concludes with insightful comments based on the findings and suggestions for eradicating those obstacles and their associated effects.