Supply Chain Resilience Strategies in the Era of Global Disruptions: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed critical vulnerabilities in global supply chains, highlighting the need for enhanced resilience strategies. This research examines supply chain resilience practices adopted by multinational corporations during and after the pandemic through a comprehensive case study analysis of 45 organizations across manufacturing, retail, and technology sectors. The study reveals that organizations with high resilience capabilities demonstrated 307% better ROI on resilience investments and recovered 195% faster than low-resilience counterparts. Key resilience strategies include supply base diversification, digital supply chain integration, and agile response mechanisms, with high-resilience organizations experiencing only 12.3 days of production downtime compared to 52.7 days for low-resilience organizations. The findings provide a framework for building robust supply chains capable of withstanding future disruptions.