Design and deployment of sustainable recovery strategies in the supply chain

When a disruption hits the supply chain, recovery strategies are deployed using either preparedness backup plans or ad-hoc situational reactions. Ad-hoc recovery actions usually imply expensive air transport, which produces higher CO2 emissions, to compensate for material shortages and avoid production stops. Despite the large variety of methods developed to improve resilience in supply chains, literature is silent about the environmental impact of recovery strategies. Through a simulation-based analysis using the anyLogistix digital supply chain model, we examine the impact of two sustainable recovery strategies - additive manufacturing and electric trucks - on supply chain environmental and resilience performance. We demonstrate that the proposed strategies allow recovery sustainability to be improved as compared to ad-hoc reactions with high CO2 emissions. Our findings contribute to the literature on supply chain resilience by extending the existing knowledge on the trade-offs between resilience and sustainability in line with the Industry 5.0 framework toward building sustainable resilience.