Enhancing resilience in the global automotive supply chain: lessons learned from the systematic literature review

The automobile is the lifeblood of our daily mobility. Its access, however, has been severely limited due to the sudden disruption of the automotive supply chain caused by the draconian COVID-19 control measures and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Since the automotive industry affects other supporting industries such as steel, rubber, battery, and glass, its struggle can bring down the entire worldwide economy. Despite its essential role, today's automotive industry has been hit hard by the continuous disruption of its supply chain due to incoming part shortages. This paper proposes various practical remedies to enhance automotive supply chain resilience by identifying vulnerabilities and mitigating supply chain risks. This paper conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of academic literature on the automotive supply chain to develop such remedies. Our review revealed that the automaker's lack of collaboration with its supply chain partners and the subsequent inability to tackle organisational and operational risks were major culprits for its vulnerability to supply chain disruptions. We also found that adopting digital technologies such as additive manufacturing, autonomous mobile robots, cloud computing, big data analytics, the internet of things, and blockchain technology would be one of the most effective remedies for supply chain resilience.