Open Access

Martin Bruckler, Lars Wietschel, Lukas Messmann, Andrea Thorenz, Axel Tuma

• Efficiency and profitability are the main drivers of globalization and have led to long and complex supply chains. Recent disturbances such as COVID-19 or the Suez Canal obstruction caused severe supply disruptions and thereby unveiled the vulnerability of global trade. Resilient supply chains are characterized by the capacity to absorb, adapt to, and restore after disruptions. Building upon the established concept of the ‘resilience curve’, this article explores the interplay between resilience capacities, metrics, and actions in the state-of-the-art literature. We first analyze and harmonize the terminology used to describe capacities as well as metrics for quantifying resilience. This results in a set of 17 resilience metrics that describe all characteristics of the resilience curve and can be used as a tool to assess the resilience of a supply chain. Subsequently, we propose how these metrics can be applied to quantify the effect of resilience actions. Finally, we analyze whichEfficiency and profitability are the main drivers of globalization and have led to long and complex supply chains. Recent disturbances such as COVID-19 or the Suez Canal obstruction caused severe supply disruptions and thereby unveiled the vulnerability of global trade. Resilient supply chains are characterized by the capacity to absorb, adapt to, and restore after disruptions. Building upon the established concept of the ‘resilience curve’, this article explores the interplay between resilience capacities, metrics, and actions in the state-of-the-art literature. We first analyze and harmonize the terminology used to describe capacities as well as metrics for quantifying resilience. This results in a set of 17 resilience metrics that describe all characteristics of the resilience curve and can be used as a tool to assess the resilience of a supply chain. Subsequently, we propose how these metrics can be applied to quantify the effect of resilience actions. Finally, we analyze which actions are proposed in the literature and classify those actions according to their relation to traditional supply chain planning tasks. Practitioners such as supply chain decision-makers can implement these actions to strengthen the absorptive, adaptive, and restorative capacities and are provided with mathematical formulations to quantify the strengthening effect of actions. Academic research can, inter alia, integrate the metrics into multi-criteria optimization models for decision-making and explore the interplay between economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, and resilience.…