Multi-tier analysis of the medical equipment supply chain network: empirical analysis and simulation of a major rupture

What is it about?

The complexity of global purchasing across multiple global tiers of supply networks had been recognized as a source of uncertainty before the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic was the black swan that professionals in the medical supply chain field had noted its threat in recent years. While a global supply network can provide stability to address localized interruptions, however, the recent global pandemic materialized many concerns and risks associated with the global supply network. The interruptions were specifically worrisome for critical supplies such as medical equipment. Considering the short-term and long-term effects of changes in the global supply chain, this research explores how the location characteristics of the firms across the supply chain affect their performance. Using the mined data from five tiers of the backward supply chain of medical equipment we constructed a large value chain network consisting of close to 160,000 dyadic connections. Furthermore, we ran a scenario to simulate the elimination of Chinese firms from the global supply chain to study the effect of such a change on firms’ performance. The result of this study provides notable insight into how various measures of network centrality affect firms’ performance.

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Photo by Fabio Ballasina on Unsplash

Photo by Fabio Ballasina on Unsplash