Supply chain resilience for vaccines: review of modeling approaches in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: Despite rapid success in bringing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to distribution by multiple pharmaceutical corporations, supply chain failures in production and distribution can plague pandemic recovery. This review analyzes and addresses gaps in modeling supply chain resilience in general and specifically for vaccines in order to guide researchers and practitioners alike to improve critical function of vaccine supply chains in the face of inevitable disruptions. Design/methodology/approach: Systematic review of the literature on modeling supply chain resilience from 2007 to 2020 is analyzed in tandem with the vaccine supply chain manufacturing literature. These trends are then used to apply a novel matrix analysis to seven Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) annual filings of pharmaceutical corporations involved in COVID-19 vaccine manufacture and distribution. Findings: Pharmaceutical corporations favor efficiency as they navigate regulatory, economic and other threats to their vaccine supply chains, neglecting resilience – absorption, adaptation and recovery from inevitable and unexpected disruptions. However, explicitly applying resilience analytics to the vaccine supply chain and further leveraging emerging network science tools found in the academic literature, such as artificial intelligence (AI), stress tests and digital twins, will help supply chain managers to better quantify efficiency/resilience tradeoffs across all associated networks/domains and support optimal system performance post disruption. Originality/value: This is the first review addressing resilience analytics in vaccine supply chains and subsequent extension to operational management through novel matrix analyses of SEC Filings. The authors provide analyses and recommendations that facilitate resilience quantification capabilities for vaccine supply chain managers, regulatory agencies and corporate stakeholders and are especially relevant for pandemic response, including application to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.