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Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

Keywords

COVID-19 epidemic; public health crisis; prevention and containment; economic redevelopment; Beer Game; supply chain management

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak starting at the end of 2019 has turned into a huge public health crisis, with deep and long-lasting social-economic impact on China and around the world. Regrettably, such terrible events are no longer happening once in a century, but perhaps once in a decade or even sooner. Therefore, how to effectively deal with a large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease is an important and urgent question facing the world. The COVID-19 outbreak is both an unfortunate event and a great opportunity for learning. The arduous process of prevention and containment, with countless difficulties throughout, suggests that most of the problems are in fact a supply-and-demand problem, with a dysfunctional supply chain as the ultimate culprit. Drawing on the main principles of modern supply chain management theory, this article makes a number of suggestions for improving the prevention-and-containment process in the future, such as establishing a country-wide monitoring system for contagious diseases, maintaining national strategic safety inventories of key medical supplies, creating a national command center for emergency response and management, etc. On the other hand, as we continue to deal with the COVID-19, more and more attention will undoubtedly turn to economic re-development. By again relying on supply chain thinking, this article attempts to provide a unique angle for understanding the epidemic's impact on industries, with suggestions for companies that are in the process of re-starting production.

First page

289

Last Page

296

Language

Chinese

Publisher

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences

References

Chen F, Samroengraja R. The Stationary Beer Game. Production and Operations Management, 2000, (9):19-30.

Lee H L, Padmanabhan P, Whang S. Information Distortion in a Supply Chain:The Bullwhip Effect. Management Science, 1997, 43:546-558.

Chen F. Information Sharing and Supply Chain Coordination//de Kok A G, Graves S C, Eds. The Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science (Vol. 11): Supply Chain Management: Design, Coordination, and Operation. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2003.

Chen F. Decentralized supply chains subject to information delays. Management Science, 1999, 45:1076-1090.

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