Logistics and Supply Chain Management of Food Industry During COVID-19: Disruptions and a Recovery Plan

An ongoing worldwide pandemic, known as Covid infection 2019 (COVID-19), influences the food supply chains significantly. In the pandemic situation, the movements of the people are restricted due to strict lock-down, and retail shops are closed. The supply of products to the customer is a challenging situation for the food supplier. These disruptions impact the food supply chain system suddenly, and the process can collapse without necessary and immediate actions. In this paper, a direct delivery channel has been used as a recovery strategy to minimize the effects of disruptions in the pandemic situation. In the recovery plan, the manufacturer appoints vendors and delivers the products directly to the customers by introducing multi-delivery channels. We optimize the recovery plan under the profit maximization criteria from the recovery window. Some numerical examples have been illustrated to justify that the developed recovery model can resist the reduction of demand and improve the profit of the system. Also, managerial insights are discussed which help the decision-makers to make an accurate and prompt decision of designing a recovery strategy during COVID-19.