AN OPEN-SOURCE TOOL FOR DIGITAL MAPPING OF MULTI-TIER SUPPLY CHAINS FOR VISIBILITY AND EMPOWERING RESILIENCE

Both upstream (aka demand side, bullwhip effect) and downstream disruptions (aka ripple effect) have crucial effect on not only operational efficiency of supply chains, also for surviving in catastrophic events. Despite the upstream disruptions, downstream disruptions tend to have deep uncertainty in which the timing and possible impacts are quite challenging to forecast. Only with end-to-end visibility of the supply chain it is possible to develop best mitigation plans for these unforeseen disruptions which require digital mapping the physical multi-tier supply chain.

Existing supply chain mapping tools capability are limited mostly with web scrapping for notification. Provided risk analytics tools are relying on qualitative surveys. Rather, there is a need for a digital supply chain mapping and visualization tool that enables defining and monitoring various risk related KPIs such as node and flow complexity, density, node criticality of the network as well as time to survive (TTS) and recover (TTR) analysis. Furthermore, that tool need to be accessible to all internal and external stakeholders of the supply chain with minimum software, hardware and skill requirement.

Our online open-source digital tool for this need provides researchers an infrastructure to develop further analytic capabilities including a Bayesian analysis to anticipate the likelihood of the disruption scenarios along with their duration as well as combinatorial and simulation methods for developing the best mitigation plans during the disruption.

Furthermore, primarily small and medium size enterprises benefits from our tool by removing the cost and skill barriers needed to deploy advanced analytics solutions. Furthermore, it has the potential to support public bodies for designing their service networks to individuals including humanitarian and pharmaceutical supply chains.