dc.description.abstract | The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has been the most serious pandemic since the Spanish flu in 1918. What the public thought to be just a medical problem, turns out to have a much severe impact, developing into a status where cities ware shut down and manufacturing supply chains were seriously affected. In particular, in addition to the severe pneumonia, there is also the Sino-US trade war since 2018. Although it seems that the two forces are competing, in fact, the proportion of production is gradually adjusted and no longer concentrated in a single country, and affected the configuration of the supply chain. Under the impact, how can Taiwanese companies adjust their supply chain configuration, in particular, the inventory strategy, to respond?
This research adopts the in-depth interview method of qualitative research, and extracts the results through data analysis through Grounded Theory. The objective is to understand how, under the huge uncertainty brought about by the impact of the epidemic, Taiwanese manufacturers review and adjust the lean production practices that have been widely accepted in the past decades.
In the past, manufacturers kept an appropriate level of inventories, as a buffers to cope with environmental uncertainties. However, over the past few decades, along with the advent of information technologies, they have moved away from inventory, and adopt the more efficient lean production approach. In the event of an impact, without sufficient buffers, some of them cannot maintain the flow of goods along the supply chain, resulting in production interruptions.
This study reveals a few interesting results. First, currently, Taiwanese manufacturers generally adopts the lean production approach. Under recent environmental changes, production has become unstable, even facing production line stoppage, or factory closures. This results in reexamination of the lean production practice. Second, in order to cope with these uncertainties arising from environmental factors, some of the slowly creeping back to keep higher levels of inventory, or slack resources, to buffer from the uncertainties and stabilize productions. | en_US |