Introduction

Supply chains have always been vulnerable to shocks that occur locally or internationally (Francis, 2020). Some of the shocks include pandemics, political instability, and trade wars. The shocks that affect supply operations reduce the flow of goods and services. Coronavirus pandemic caused significant challenges for the supply chain worldwide. Due to multiple national lockdown it greatly affected the flow of raw materials and finished goods. As a result, the actions disrupted the manufacturing of products. For instance, the nations that are dependent on Chinese products suffered due to lack of inputs due to lockdown restrictions. During the pandemic, many organizations have suffered due to products shortages. This paper will focus on identifying the various supply chain challenges caused by COVID 19 such as volatility. Furthermore, it will focus on how the maritime supply chain can reduce the negative impacts of COVID 19 on global supply chains. As a result, the paper aims at providing measures to achieve resilient supply chains.

Supply chain challenges

Volatility

COVID 19 has changed the normal supply-demand relationship and businesses’ responses to inventory make the supply chains more volatile. Supply chain volatility refers to the unplanned variation of upstream and downstream of products flow in the mismatch of supply and demand. COVID 19 greatly affected the supply and demand of products globally (Sarkis, 2020). Due to local and international lockdown, the supply of products declined and firms could not meet the demand. When volatility occurs the supply chain process is fully challenged. Failure of organizations failing to meet the demand led to low sales, lost profit, and low customer base. For example, companies that depended on China to supply raw materials could not produce their products and they ended up closing. Many firms were dependent on a just-in-time supply systems and the method was very effective before the pandemic. Just in time system enabled firms to cut the inventory costs and effective management of inventory.

However, the system was challenging during the pandemic due to the high demand for products and low supply. Lockdown spending made the demand to be too high. Therefore, due to negative effects on supply chain systems, it is not easy to meet the demand locally and internationally. The supply chain managers should be ready to learn from the effects of the pandemic and build a more resilient supply chain system. Additionally, to reduce volatility firms should be ready to localise their supply chain (Chowdhury et al,. 2020) As a result, in the occurrence of another shock, it is easy for the suppliers to meet the demand.

Transport sector

Most firms have outsourced and extended many productions and supply chain activities leading to a higher dependency on global suppliers and complexity increasing vulnerability to supply chain disruptions. When the lockdown was implemented the transport sector upon which global supply chain activities depended remained closed. Firms could not access the necessary inputs to manufacture products to meet the rising demand. The transport sector greatly influenced the supply chain. For instance, road, shipping, and air transport could not operate smoothly Statistics indicate that more than 90 nations had enforced lockdown by March 2020 and in April 2020, more than 4 billion people were on lockdown (Da Silva, Kovaleski & Pagani, 2020). Therefore there were restrictions to smooth the flow of the global supply chain negatively affecting global business activities.

Also, due to the rise in fuel prices, the cost of transporting goods to their destinations was high. As a result, the supply chain managers faced challenges while procuring products. Today, the pandemic affects the supply chain because all the people involved in the supply chain system must comply with the government vaccination policies. When the drivers fail to comply with the policies they can be allowed to transport goods to destination areas. For example, in Canada, the truck drivers failed to comply with the government rules, on the other hand, firms good not get their inputs which affected most businesses productivity.

Reliability challenge

Reliable supply chains are significant to the productivity and economic growth of countries. Coronavirus initially impacted China where many firms get their raw materials and other products leading to supply chain disruption. Due to local lockdown firms could not access their products from their suppliers. As a result, the reliability of the supply chain was very low. During the lockdown period, the level of demand was high while the level of supply was low. Supply chain reliability was low and firms could not meet consumer