Dr Miroslav Dragic (University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global supply chains due to a sudden disruption in supply and demand. In these conditions, supply chain management, which is responsible for coordinating both the internal activities of SMEs and the relationship between their customers and suppliers is becoming increasingly complex. The tools of Industry 4.0, can be useful for SMEs to increase performance in terms of time, money, and resource use. So, integrating SC processes and making information transparent among customers and suppliers enables SMEs to engage in collaborative actions. This leads to increased flexibility, productivity, and quality as well as the possibility of optimizing their business processes.
The flexibility of the supply chains of SMEs is becoming a significant feature that allows SMEs to adapt their business process to the new situation. Also, flexibility can be a powerful tool for gaining a competitive advantage, reducing costs, and improving response to unforeseen situations. This work has demonstrated that by performing simulations one can predict an enterprise’s ability to cope with the changing environment. In addition, it is possible to predict the effects of running various actions in order to increase the ability of the enterprise to meet the requirements of customers. The effects of various strategies and management decisions can be observed by monitoring the dependence of performance measures of simulated processes on values of model parameters. In addition to achieving efficiency and effectiveness, the goal is also to achieve adequate flexibility, which is the key to achieving competitive advantage.