The Role of Fuzzy Logic to Dealing with Epistemic Uncertainty in Supply Chain Risk Assessment: Review Standpoints

The nature of supply chains presents a variety of issues related to uncertainties. Under various uncertainties, risk management plays a crucial role in an effective supply chain decision-making. The uncertainty involved in the risk assessment process can be divided into two types: random uncertainty and epistemic uncertainty. Fuzzy theory has been applied to deal with uncertainties. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role and contribution of the fuzzy logic in the treatment of epistemic uncertainty into supply chain risk management approaches. A literature review process was performed, followed by analysis and discussions on the examined topic. The results revealed that the integration with multicriteria decision-making and disruptive analysis methods are the most common types adopted, with trend to petri nets and multicriteria decision-making approaches. Supply risks are the most studied type and identification and assessment are the most developed processes in supply chain risk management. Although the publications on the subject has been highlighted, they present some limitations related to the holistic complexity of risks in supply chains, the dynamic nature of the environment and the reliability of the background knowledge in the assessment. In that sense, these remarks reveal interesting future researches lines.