Exploring Critical Events of Perishable Product Supply Chain Using Fault Tree Methodology to Deal with Impacts of COVID-19

Abstract

This research investigates the impact of pandemic COVID-19, on the perishable product supply chain (PPSC). Thematic analysis for the cause of failure in PPSC has been identified through the NVivo application. It examines the events that cause disruption. Secondly, fault tree methodology has adopted qualitative evaluation using the minimum cut set analysis and importance measures. A case study of the apple supply chain in Shimla, India has been included, collecting data from respondents, research papers, government reports, and newspaper articles published from the period March 2020 to December 2020. The occurrence of failure in the apple supply chain included crop yield loss, unavailability, and inaccessibility of apple products. After analysis, 13 minimum cut sets are obtained. These include critical failure event as: assistance in failure from government and organization, high food prices, labour shortage, and cross border restriction. Potential strategies for resilient PPSC have been proposed for an efficient decision-making process.