Purpose

The catastrophic state of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has seized off all the operations along with the globe. It has not only distressed the socio-economic structure of the world but also mounted enormous pressure on the governmental bodies to save the lives of the people. Despite this, severe impacts of the same have been observed on the small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMME) practices, resulting in the economic downturn. The purpose of this study is to facilitate the SMME’s with circular economy (CE) practices to overcome the negative impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on their supply chain (SC) operations.

Design/methodology/approach

The presented work identified seven critical impacts as criteria of the novel COVID-19 pandemic on the Indian SMME and seeks to identify the relief measures in the CE paradigm by identifying 13 prominent enablers to CE as alternatives. Experts’ opinions have been engaged to detect CE enablers’ proficiency to overpower the pandemic impact through a questionnaire-based survey. The obtained data have been clustered and analyzed through a hybrid approach of entropy weight method and grey relational analysis to find an organized ranking of the enablers.

Findings

Current work spotlights the SMME’s losses due to SC disruptions and declined consumption patterns. The waste augmentation during the pandemic era has also been grouped in this study, primarily associating with the SC’s waste generation. The result of the performed analysis shows that the CE enabler “waste reduction and its transformation into a resource (E1)” have achieved the highest rank among all the considered enablers, governing a higher demand toward reusing waste for better handling the post COVID era state of affairs.

Originality/value

The presented study aimed to suppress the pandemic impact and generate anticipation of the CE concept, which might help the managers and policymakers identify its urgent need to achieve a stable and resilient SC system in a post COVID period. Presented work is peculiar, aiming to accelerate the CE adaption with green material usage in the industrial sector to suppress the present miserable condition and to achieve industrial and social sustainability for a better-foreseen future.

中文翻译：

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通过循环经济促进可持续和有弹性的供应链来减少covid-19大流行影响的恢复性措施

目的

COVID-19 大流行爆发的灾难性状态使全球所有业务都陷入困境。它不仅困扰着世界的社会经济结构，而且对政府机构施加了巨大的压力，以挽救人民的生命。尽管如此，同样的严重影响已经对中小型制造企业 (SMME) 的做法产生了影响，导致经济下滑。本研究的目的是促进 SMME 的循环经济 (CE) 实践，以克服 COVID-19 爆发对其供应链 (SC) 运营的负面影响。

设计/方法/方法

所提出的工作确定了七项关键影响作为新型 COVID-19 大流行对印度 SMME 的标准，并通过确定 CE 的 13 个主要推动因素作为替代方案，试图确定 CE 范式中的救济措施。通过基于问卷的调查，专家们的意见被用来检测 CE 推动者在克服大流行影响方面的能力。通过熵权法和灰色关联分析的混合方法对获得的数据进行聚类和分析，以找到有组织的促成因素排名。

发现

目前的工作突出了 SMME 由于 SC 中断和消费模式下降而造成的损失。本研究还对大流行期间的废物增加进行了分组，主要与 SC 的废物产生有关​​。执行分析的结果表明，CE 促成因素“减少废物及其转化为资源 (E1)”在所有考虑的促成因素中排名最高，从而对废物再利用以更好地处理后 COVID 时代状态提出了更高的要求事务的。

原创性/价值

所提出的研究旨在抑制大流行的影响并产生对 CE 概念的预期，这可能有助于管理人员和政策制定者确定其在 COVID 后时期实现稳定和有弹性的 SC 系统的迫切需要。所呈现的工作很特别，旨在通过工业部门的绿色材料使用来加速 CE 适应，以抑制目前的悲惨状况，并实现工业和社会的可持续发展，以更好地预见未来。