Supply chain resilience for managing the ripple effect in Industry 4.0 for green product diffusion

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine (1) how the recovery speed using promotional investment and (2) distributed production using additive manufacturing (AM) improve the resilience of the supply chain to manage any disruptions in the diffusion of green products.Design/methodology/approachThe environmental performance, service level performance and economic performance are the measures of interest. These measures are studied through the integration of inventory and production planning (I&PP) of the reverse logistics system and consumer behavior using Bass (1969) model of diffusion of innovation under the paradigm of Industry 4.0 architecture. The Taguchi experimental design framework was used for the simulation analysis.FindingsThe adoption patterns based on the Bass model in conjunction with recovery speed and production on AM during the disruption period suggest that there exist tradeoff decisions between various combinations of information-sharing and I&PP policies.Practical implicationsThe extensive sensitivity analyses provide real-time support for managerial decisions. Besides the potentials of Industry 4.0 capabilities, the present research suggests paying close attention to the recovery speed in conjunction with the inventory management system.Social implicationsThe integration of consumers' behavior (Bass model) to digital technologies is an additional contribution of the present research toward sustainability issues from the social perspective.Originality/valuePrevious research studies have discussed resilience to manage the ripple effect. However, none of them have addressed the changing scope of resilience to manage the ripple effect caused by the disruption in the diffusion of green products in a reverse logistics setup.