Identifying Sources of COVID19 pandemic supply chain fragility

Abstract

Supply chain management is in the industrial engineering management and operations management disciplines. It involves product procurement of raw materials, production, storage, distribution, wholesales, and retail sales. The COVID19 pandemic has the added challenge of healthcare service operations management. This paper is a bibliometric study of the COVID19 supply chain fragility problem. In February 2021, the United States’ President called for a review of the pandemic related supply chain for vaccines, personal protective equipment (PPE), medical equipment such as ventilators, and food. This study involves a search for references published between January 1, 2020 and April 30, 2021. It reveals that food was a primary topic among 82 publications rather than vaccines. Also, reasons cited for America’s supply chain fragility include America’s dependence on products produced in other countries such as China; these countries’ own pandemic induced supply chain challenges; and US trade restrictions on such products enacted prior to the COVID19 outbreak. Engineering management strategies were mentioned in 60% of the publications and are summarized in the Conclusions and Implications for Managers are provided.