Ensuring Supply Chain Resilience: Development of a Conceptual Framework

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. In a world of turbulent change, resilience is a key competency since even the most carefully designed supply chain is susceptible to unforeseen events. This article presents a new Supply Chain Resilience Framework to help businesses deal with change. The conceptual framework is based on extant literature and refined through a focus group methodology. Our findings suggest that supply chain resilience can be assessed in terms of two dimensions: vulnerabilities and capabilities. The Zone of Resilience is defined as the desired balance between vulnerabilities and capabilities, where it is proposed that firms will be the most profitable in the long term. We identified seven vulnerability factors composed of 40 specific attributes and 14 capability factors from 71 attributes that facilitate the measurement of resilience. The article concludes with managerial implications and recommendations for future research.