ABSTRACT
The Covid pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine, increasing protectionism, and trade wars combined with repeating natural disasters around the world have put many global supply chains in a critical state and raised questions about their reliability. How to respond to the current crisis in the supply chain and whether the popular paradigms of lean manufacturing and just-in-time inventory have to be reevaluated depends on how unique the causes that led to the recent global supply chain crises are. This paper reviews the main causes of supply chain disruptions, including natural disasters, war conflicts, cyberwars, and transportation problems, and debates the likelihood of their recurrence in coming years. The paper concludes that the main causes of supply chain disruptions have fundamental reasons that will stay with us for the foreseeable future; de-risking supply chains requires both countries and businesses to reevaluate their approach to the organization of supply chains, prioritizing resilience alongside profit considerations in their business arrangement.
Keywords
supply chain disruption, supply chain resilience, natural disasters, trade wars, transportation bottlenecks, geographic diversification