Proceedings of Annual Paris Business and Social Science Research Conference
7 - 8 August 2014, Hotel Crowne Plaza Republique, Paris, France, ISBN: 978-1-922069-57-3
Mitigating Supply Chain Risk through Building Critical Agile
Supply Chain Capabilities
An-Yuan Chang
In order to achieve a higher level of performance in globalization business environments,
companies need to design a robust supply chain, which allows the companies to interact with
suppliers and customers and works together to achieve greater success. However, the
expanded business operational activities have exposed supply chains to involve more risk
factors. Companies should prepare themselves to cope with all unexpected risks and develop
effective strategies to mitigate the risks. Supply chain agility facilitates a firm to react swiftly to
volatile marketplaces and uncertain demands, thereby enabling the firm to be more efficient in
synchronizing demand with supply, and thus help to establish a superior competitive position.
Therefore supply chain agility has been considered as an effective approach to mitigate supply
chain risks. However, so far, no such an operational model associated with how to mitigate risks
by using agility strategy has been proposed in literature. This research will push the concept of
risk and agility together and forward in an integrated way. It can provide effective agility
capabilities to mitigate the supply chain risks.
The purpose of this research is to construct an integrated model combining quality function
deployment (QFD), mixed multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) approaches and graph
theory and matrix approach (GTMA) to prioritize effective supply chain agility capabilities to
enable supply chain systems more competitive in risk environment. Using this integrated model
risk factors and agility capabilities will be defined in accordance with our research propose and
a more comprehensive measurement approach for supply chain risks mitigation by using agility
capabilities will be illustrated.
An extension of the traditional QFD approach is another underlying theme of this research.
This integrated approach attempts to remedy the incomplete situation of the traditional QFD, in
which the dependencies among the voices of customer are not considered. Furthermore, not
only GTMA is firstly combined with QFD in this research, but also it is the first attempt in the
literature to combine GTMA with fuzzy extent analytical hierarchy process (FEAHP) and grey
relational analysis (GRA) in the MCDM approach and in the risks mitigation model of a supply
chain system.
Keywords: Supply Chain Risk, Supply Chain Agility, Extended QFD, FEAHP, GRA, GTMA
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An-Yuan Chang, Department of Industrial Management and Institute of Industrial Engineering and Management,
National Formosa University, 64, Wun Hwa Road, Hu Wei, Yunlin 632, Taiwan, R.O.C.