SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

The Coronavirus outbreak has instigated demand and supply
interruption risks that influence supply chain (SC) management, implying an
inevitability to foster the agility to ease the risks. The article investigates the
complex and systemic effects of the Coronavirus outbreak on the global
apparel SCs from the perspective of risk management in multinational
business. This article proposes risk management in the global apparel SCs
during the Coronavirus outbreak using four steps based on an in-depth
literature review. Despite several SC management (SCM) approaches, this
article emphasizes equalling the lean SCM versus the agile SCM (with a little
about risk-hedging SCM and responsive SCM) as these are the foremost SCM
styles that the apparel industry adopts the most. Furthermore, this article
exposed the inadequacy of the lean-SCM framework caused by the absence
of the SC transparency due to the increase in demand unpredictability
identified even before the Coronavirus epidemic. On the other hand, the agileSCM framework tackles this problem through augmenting the supplier–buyer
connections for better information swap, but it also involves a linked upsurge
in inventory cost and business stock. Thus, this article delivers several
approaches that businesses can apply to alleviate the risks and discover key
areas for upcoming works, considering downstream and upstream
stakeholders in the apparel SC.