ABSTRACT

Globally, countries are struggling to fulfil customer demands due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on perishable food supply chains (PFSCs). This study aims to analyse the factors influencing PFSCs during the pandemic and improve their resiliency. This is essential as some factors discourage the productive execution of PFSCs and decrease organisational performance, thus lowering stakeholder satisfaction. This study has been conducted in two phases. The first phase, through extensive review and discussion with experts, identifies the influencing factors related to supply chain (SC) disturbances in PFSCs. In the second phase, a hybrid method i.e. g-DANP, a combination of grey-decision making trial and evaluation laboratory and analytic network process, is employed to develop a hierarchical structure to measure their influence. The proposed framework is validated with a case of the current COVID-19 outbreak. The study revealed that factors, restriction on import-export and fear of violation of social distancing guidelines, are the primary ‘cause’ group factors; whereas, price variation of perishable products and panic buying and stockpiling are the crucial ‘effect’ group factors affecting the PFSCs. The findings also enrich existing literature by providing analytical support to relationships between various factors affecting PFSCs during the pandemic.

摘要

在全球范围内，由于 COVID-19 大流行对易腐烂食品供应链 (PFSC) 的影响，各国都在努力满足客户的需求。本研究旨在分析大流行期间影响 PFSC 的因素并提高其弹性。这是必不可少的，因为某些因素会阻碍 PFSC 的有效执行并降低组织绩效，从而降低利益相关者的满意度。本研究分两个阶段进行。第一阶段，通过与专家的广泛审查和讨论，确定与 PFSC 中供应链 (SC) 干扰相关的影响因素。在第二阶段，一种混合​​方法，即g-DANP是灰色决策试验和评估实验室与分析网络过程的结合，被用来开发一个层次结构来衡量它们的影响。拟议的框架已通过当前 COVID-19 爆发的案例进行验证。研究表明，限制进出口和害怕违反社会疏离准则是主要的“原因”群体因素；而易腐烂产品的价格变化和恐慌性购买和囤积是影响PFSC的关键“效应”群体因素。这些发现还通过为大流行期间影响 PFSC 的各种因素之间的关系提供分析支持，丰富了现有文献。