Resilience Role of Distribution Centers amid COVID-19 Crisis in Tier-A Cities of India: A Green Field Analysis Experiment
-From Journal of Operations and Strategic Planning
Introduction
The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted
to long-term severe global disruptions which immensely affects the viability (Ivanov,
2018b) of supply chain ecosystem (Ivanov,
2020). In recent times, these supply chain (SC)
disruptions (Chesbrough,
2020; Choi,
2020; Currie
et al., 2020; Ivanov,
2020a; Ivanov
& Das, 2020; Ivanov
& Dolgui, 2020b; Kinra
et al., 2020; Madhavan
& Kaushika 2020; Sarkis
et al., 2020) have affected all the elements of economy and
society (Ivanov,
2020) and raised a serious concern for a sustainable
supply chain management (Islam
et al., 2020).
Unlikely, the virus has posed
critical challenges during the lockdown period since March 25, 2020 in India,
and the entire food supply chain has witnessed a big hit in terms of loss of
revenue. Therefore, in order to align various supply chain practices such as
inventory management, purchase management, and strategic supplier relationship
(Chong
et al., 2011; Dubey
& Ali, 2015; Langerak
et al., 2004; Li
et al., 2006; Truong
et al., 2017) with the demands of surviving in a changing
environment, viable system model by Beer
(1985) and ecology modeling angles (Aubin,
1991) can be followed.
However, these SC practices vary from
one manufacturing environment to another (Brun
& Castelli, 2008; Trkman
& McCormack, 2009), and an urgent need arises to focus
on total quality management (TQM) and supply chain management (SCM) (Duarte
et al., 2011; Narasimhan
et al., 2005; Sharma
& Modgil, 2019). This will act as an instigator to improve the
financial performance of these manufacturing firms and SC viability in the
current scenario (Ivanov,
2020).
In the current context of COVID-19
outbreak where supply chains are facing higher risk of disruptions, one
relevant question that rises is: how can cost savings be created by reducing
warehousing cost. Therefore, today’s supply chain leaders go for warehouses and
distribution centers (DCs) to meet the dynamic demand of customers during this
disruption Bhasin
(2019).
Though COVID-19 pandemic has revealed
a series of novel challenges for retail SC including insufficient logistics
infrastructure and ‘dilution’ of transportation problem (Stošić
Mihajlović & Trajković, 2017). Hence, in order to improvise the
current situation, DC in combination of warehouses plays an important and
significant role (Baker,
2008). This combat will solve the problem of distribution
and storage of staple food to various physical locations. Hence, warehouses
store the staple food and DCs help in the rapid movement of staple food from
one location to another. Therefore, to deal with the present circumstances, DCs
need to be more responsive to volatile markets (Maltz
& DeHoratius, 2004) and variances in the overall volume
of goods (van
Hoek, 2001) to meet the present SC’s agile requirements (Baker,
2008).
The current scenario also demands the
same kind of approach from government food distribution agencies like Food
Corporation of India (FCI), which collected all the staple food (grains,
millets, sugar, oil, etc.) directly from farmers and was responsible for
further food distribution in supply chain. FCI was further relying on Indian
Railways and road transport and supplied almost 8 million tons of food grain to
different regions of the nation with the help of various distributors and local
government bodies.
In addition to this, ‘Lifeline Udaan’
flights mission was also carried out, in lieu of this pandemic disease where
private and government aircraft fleets transported the essential commodities to
remote parts of our nation. During this mission, they distributed 863 tonnes of
food to the primarily affected regions (Iyer,
2020). Even under the current COVID-19 scenario, the
government-managed ‘Licensed Fair Price Shops Network’ ensures availability of
the available goods under the public distribution system (PDS), round the year.
FCI supplied 0.193 million metric tonnes of grain in just 2 days during the
lockdown period. Furthermore, these efforts became more fruitful and worthy with
the help of NGOs, grocery stores, e-commerce players, and thousands of truck
drivers.
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