The Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Global Supply Chain Operations: A System Dynamics Approach

Epidemic outbreaks are one of the important sources of the risk in the global supply chains. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, global industries that were unprepared for disruptions experienced a decline due to the pandemic. A global supply chain is a complex system set of dynamics that could be analyzed by the system dynamics approach. In this article, the impact of the recent pandemic on the global supply chain is simulated in different scenarios. A system dynamic model is developed to carry out the simulations. In order to consider the impact of the pandemic on the exogenous and endogenous variables, a force majeure factor is defined in the model. Global features considered in this article are the export and import operations, the exchange rate and the rate of tariff. In this article, a scenario analysis is performed to analyze two important factors of the global supply chain: force majeure factor and delivery delay. Results showed that improving the flexibility of production capacity is one of the important strategies that global supply chain managers should pursue. JEL Codes: F23, P45, C15, C63, E37, F17