Understanding Supply Chain Visibility Through Experts’ Perspective: A Delphi Based Approach

Visibility in production logistics and across the supply chain has become a key concern for organizations. Its need has been further emphasized due to the current COVID 19 crisis. Organizations find it challenging to prepare the internal logistics and supply chain, and quickly respond to such unexpected events, due to low visibility. Against this backdrop, the paper, which is a work-in-progress, systematically documents different factors influencing supply chain visibility and crucial information that should be collected and shared among supply chain partners for better visibility. A Delphi analysis is being conducted with twenty-six supply chain experts from various globally recognized enterprises with manufacturing units located worldwide. The study starts with a short open-ended questioner to collect a comprehensive list of antecedents, drivers, barriers, effects, and visibility information based on the qualitative response from the experts. The preliminary results from the first round of the Delphi analysis indicate that risk management, environmental sustainability, and supply chain control are some of the key drivers. Lack of IT infrastructure and maturity are some of the barriers, integrated systems, and technology maturity are among the key antecedents and gaining planning capability and better customer service are some of the positive effects of supply chain visibility as per the experts’ opinion. In addition, information related to planning, supplier location, and deviation are among the crucial ones that require the collection and sharing for better supply chain visibility. This research study is among the few that empirically explores factors influencing supply chain visibility and generates new insights as to why the barriers can be difficult to overcome in complex supply chain settings.