COVID-19 and Supply Chain Disruption: A Conceptual Review

COVID-19 crisis has created a new set of challenges to which supply chain managers must respond. As demand for home delivery services surge, supply chains have to adapt their supply replenishment processes, their order fulfilment processes and hire new employees to be trained in the specifics of order picking and home delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a significant health risk, and countries around the world have responded with partial shutdowns of their economies to slow the pace of infections. These measures have reportedly led to massive disruptions in the global and domestic supply chains. The findings in extant literature show that supply chains during COVID-19 are more fragile for products that travel long distances before reaching their final point of sale. Our work highlights how online data can be used in conjunction with other data-sets for real-time policymaking. This paper conceptually examines the impact of COVID-19 on supply chain disruption and response strategies adopted.