International Journal of Advanced Engineering Application

Supply Chain Resilience Capabilities, Visibility, and Firm Performance

Author(s):Harish Balaji, Sonal Gupta, T. Ravishankar

Affiliation: Department of Operations and Supply Chain Management, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, Kozhikode, Kerala, India School of Management, Doon University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India Faculty of Business and Commerce, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Page No: 53-59

Volume issue & Publishing Year: Volume 3, Issue 7, July 2026

Journal: International Journal of Advanced Engineering Application (IJAEA)

ISSN NO: 3048-6807

DOI:

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Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the structural fragility of globally integrated supply chains, triggering a fundamental reassessment of the trade-off between efficiency and resilience in supply chain design. Indian manufacturing firms — embedded in global value chains across automotive, pharmaceuticals, electronics, FMCG, and textiles — experienced disruption intensities that varied dramatically by supply chain resilience capability (SCR), revealing that pre-pandemic investments in visibility, flexibility, and collaborative partnerships were not merely cost centres but strategic insurance assets whose performance value was only realised under conditions of severe external shock. Grounded in the Dynamic Capabilities View (DCV) and the Resource Dependence Theory (RDT), this study develops and tests a structural model in which supply chain visibility and transparency, flexibility and agility, and collaborative partnerships jointly mediate the SCR capability–firm performance relationship, with disruption severity as a moderating context variable. A cross-sectional survey of 596 supply chain directors and operations managers across 102 manufacturing firms in Kerala, Uttarakhand, and Rajasthan, spanning automotive (n=26), pharmaceuticals (n=24), FMCG (n=22), electronics (n=18), and textiles (n=12), was analysed using PLS-SEM with 5,000-sample bootstrapping. Results confirm that supply chain visibility (β=0.46, p<0.001) and collaborative partnerships (β=0.49, p<0.001) are the dominant mediating pathways to financial risk mitigation, while flexibility and agility drive operational performance (β=0.41, p<0.001). The total indirect SCR–performance effect (β=0.53; 95% CI: 0.41–0.65) substantially exceeds the direct effect (β=0.15; p<0.05). A 60-month recovery time trajectory analysis confirms that high-resilience-tier firms recover from disruptions in 3 weeks versus 10–18 weeks for low-resilience counterparts. Digital technology adoption S-curves reveal ERP/MRP as the most adopted tool (92% ceiling) while digital twin simulation (28%) and blockchain provenance (38%) remain emergent. Risk heat map analysis identifies single-source dependency, cybersecurity breach, and supplier financial failure as the three highest-priority supply chain risks for Indian manufacturing firms. The return on resilience investment is estimated at ₹1.8 of loss avoided per ₹1 invested, with pharmaceutical and automotive firms achieving the highest absolute returns. Implications for the National Logistics Policy 2022, Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme design, and firm-level supply chain strategy are discussed.

Keywords: supply chain resilience, visibility, flexibility, collaborative partnerships, PLS-SEM, digital supply chain, risk management, India, COVID-19 recovery, National Logistics Policy

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