Key performance indicators for a sustainable recovery strategy in health-care supply chains: COVID-19 pandemic perspective
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JABS-05-2021-0200 |
| Published date | 14 October 2021 |
| Date | 14 October 2021 |
| Pages | 472-494 |
| Subject Matter | Strategy,International business |
| Author | Towfique Rahman,Md. Abdul Moktadir,Sanjoy Kumar Paul |
Key performance indicators for a
sustainable recovery strategy in
health-care supply chains: COVID-19
pandemic perspective
Towfique Rahman, Md. Abdul Moktadir and Sanjoy Kumar Paul
Abstract
Purpose –Supply chains’(SCs’) sustainability practices and recovery strategiesare attaining popularity
in academia and industriesto improve the resilience of the SCs and to manage large-scaledisruptions.
The global pandemic caused by the COVID-19has raised the question of the sustainability of essential
health-care products’SCs of Bangladesh. It is an essential avenue for makingthe life of people safe and
secure. Despite its importance, most of the health-care SCs in Bangladesh are struggling to meet the
demand of its nation due to capacity shortage, technological backwardness of the manufacturers,
delivery capacity shortages and less advanced forecasting capabilities. Therefore, this study aims to
investigate the key performance indicators (KPIs) of a sustainable recovery strategy in the context of
health-careSCs considering the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach –This study used a dynamicmethod named graph theory and matrix
approach to evaluate the most critical KPIs of a sustainable recovery strategy in the context of
Bangladeshihealth-care SCs.
Findings –The result revealed that dynamic forecasting and planning with a smooth delivery and
distribution support system, production capacity diversification and having alternative or multiple
suppliers during extraordinary disruptions may aid in the sustainability of the health-care SCs in
Bangladesh.
Originality/value –This study is unique as no previous study has identified and examined the
sustainable recovery strategy perspective KPIs considering the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of
Bangladeshi health-care SCs. This study will also add value by guiding decision-makers of the health-
care SCs of Bangladeshto adopt strategies toward thesustainability of SCs.
Keywords Supply chain, Sustainability, Health care, COVID-19, Key performance indicators (KPIs),
Recovery strategy
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Global supply chains (SCs) have faced enormousdisruptions in the past decade. Recently,
the COVID-19 pandemic drastically disrupted global SCs, the impact of which is yet to be
seen (Paul and Chowdhury, 2020;Chowdhury et al., 2021;Karmaker et al.,2021;Shahed
et al., 2021). Most of the global manufacturers are facing severe supply, demand and
production capacity-related disruptions, the impacts of which have affected the entire SC
networks (Ac¸ikgo
¨zandGu
¨nay, 2020;Chowdhury et al.,2020). The recent statistics show
that 75% of the companies globally faced capacitydisruptions due to transportation-related
restrictions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic situation (Chowdhuryet al.,2020). Most of the
countries imposed strict lockdowns and shutdowns to stop the spread of the disease. They
Towfique Rahman is based
at the UTS Business
School, University of
Technology Sydney,
Sydney, Australia.
Md. Abdul Moktadir is
based at the Institute of
Leather Engineering and
Technology, University of
Dhaka, Dhaka,
Bangladesh.
Sanjoy Kumar Paul is based
at the UTS Business
School, University of
Technology Sydney,
Sydney, Australia.
Received 20 May 2021
Revised 10 August 2021
Accepted 22 September 2021
PAGE 472 jJOURNAL OF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jVOL. 16 NO. 3 2022, pp. 472-494, ©EmeraldPublishing Limited, ISSN 1558-7894 DOI 10.1108/JABS-05-2021-0200
also closed their borders to stop the spread of the mutated variant of the COVID-19 virus
from one country to another (Guan et al.,2020). As a result of these actions, SCs of most of
the manufactures could not obtain raw materials from suppliers in time, resulting in a
production capacity shortage (Queiroz et al.,2020). The manufactures could not meet the
increased demand for essential products due to capacity shortage. People panic
purchased the essential products that further resulted in the stockout of products (Xu et al.,
2020). The manufacturers of essential products struggled to forecast the demand of the
products during the lockdown situation (Lopes de SousaJabbour et al.,2020). The delivery
process slowed down due to heavy restrictions of movement of people as per the guideline
of social distancing. The transporters also faced severe disruptions due to a lack of
capacity and infrastructure to deliverthe products to the consumers (Govindan et al.,2020).
Thus, large-scale disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic situation affected the
entire SC network of global businesses(Rahman et al., 2021).
Health-care SCs, those who are related to essential health-care products and drugs, faced
severe demand, supply and production capacity disruptions globally during the COVID-19
pandemic (Govindan et al., 2020). In developing countries such as Bangladesh, health-
care SCs faced significant disturbances during the pandemic situation (Taqi et al.,2020).
Bangladesh is a densely populated country, where the likelihood of COVID-19 spreading is
always high. COVID-19 cases increased drastically in Bangladesh and owing to this, the
government ordered lockdown inside the country in different phases. The hospitals
struggled to facilitate the COVID-19 infected patients with all the essential health-care
products such as personal protective equipment (PPE), facemasks, ventilators, hand
sanitizers and essential drugs (Chowdhury et al.,2020;Taqi et al., 2020). The health-care
SCs have struggled to adopt recovery plans and strategies to manage the impacts caused
by large-scale SC disruptions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Thus, the
pandemic has endangered the sustainability of the health-care SCs of Bangladesh.
The evaluation of the key performance indicators (KPIs) of a sustainable recovery strategy
in health-care SCs is necessary to understand how the recovery plans and strategies
accelerate the SC performances in the context of Bangladesh (Chowdhury et al.,2020).
However, there is no significant study conducted so far in the extant literature to evaluate
the KPIs of a recovery plan and strategy for sustainability in health-care SCs in the context
of Bangladesh. Considering the lack of research in the field of evaluation of KPIs of a
recovery plan and strategy related to health-care SC sustainability, this study considered
the following research aims:
䊏To identify the sustainable recovery strategy perspective KPIs and sub-KPIs in health-
care SCs.
䊏To propose a framework for demonstrating the KPIs to health-care SC sustainability in
the event of large-scale disruptions.
The contributions of this study are two-fold. First, theoretically, this study contributes to the
literature by identifying sustainable recovery strategy perspective KPIs and sub-KPIs in the
context of Bangladeshi health-care SCs. Second, empirically, this study proposes a graph
theory and matric approach (GTMA) based on a decision support framework to evaluate
the KPIs to health-care SCs sustainability in the wake of large-scale disruptions caused by
the COVID-19 pandemic.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides the relevant literature
review of Bangladeshi health-care SCs, SC disruptions, sustainability and KPIs of a
sustainable recovery strategy in SCs. The details of the KPIs and sub-KPIs in SC
sustainability and research gaps are also presented in this section. Section 3 discusses the
research methodology. Solution methodology is presented in Section 4. The details of the
case study are provided in Section 5. The results, discussion and managerial implications
VOL. 16 NO. 3 2022 jJOURNALOF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jPAGE 473
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