Managing supply chains during COVID-19 outbreak: a case of Hong Kong toy manufacturing company
Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management
ISSN: 2042-6747
Article publication date: 19 July 2022
Issue publication date: 21 November 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to identify key supply chain challenges and opportunities of the case of Hong Kong toy manufacturing company during the COVID-19 outbreak and develop a comprehensive structural relationship to rank them.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, a toy model company in Hong Kong is considered to discuss about what challenges and opportunities have the biggest impacts on non-necessary goods companies and how to deal with different impacts on entire supply chain flow disruption during COVID-19. A semi-structured interview with five decision-makers from the company was made to give key challenges and opportunities scores. The Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) technique is used to establish the model and rank them afterward to overcome the challenges.
Findings
From the data analysis and results, “salary of employee” and “inconvenient transportation” have emerged as top and bottom key challenges respectively. The sequence of organized challenges in the list needs to mitigate one by one in this order to improve the supply chain performance. The “client's orders’ frequency, customer management” and “supplier/partner relationship management” are identified as the top and bottom respectively to develop the opportunities.
Research limitations/implications
These key challenges and opportunities are identified as contributing attributes and provide the way to measure to improve production, profits and sustainable growth of the toy manufacturing company during a pandemic. Moreover, it helps to improve the distribution level and good planning with appropriate decision making to manage the supply chain performance considering humanitarian aspects during a pandemic outbreak.
Originality/value
The novelty of this study is to identify the key supply chain challenges and opportunities measured by the TOPSIS method to rank them and consider the case of a Hong Kong toy manufacturing company as a case-based approach to measuring its performance during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms part of a special section “The COVID19 impact on humanitarian operations: lessons for future disrupting events”, guest edited by Bhavin Shah, Guilherme Frederico, Vikas Kumar, Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes and Anil Kumar.
The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, Associate Editor, and Editor-in-Chief for their valuable comments and suggestions that helped to improve the manuscript.
Funding: The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Citation
Kumar, V., Verma, P., So, T.-C., Singh, A. and Al Owad, A. (2022), "Managing supply chains during COVID-19 outbreak: a case of Hong Kong toy manufacturing company", Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 502-531. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHLSCM-10-2021-0109
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited