Arias-Vargas, M., Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2023, September). Roadmap for Resilient Networks Building Through Artificial Intelligence. In Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (pp. 165-176). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Abstract: The business environment around the world continues to face disruptive events of varying magnitude and origin, and as a result, many companies and supply chains often struggle to overcome them. As a solution, resilience has become necessary, not only to be competitive but profitable in the long term. To build resilience, it is critical to define stratagems to enhance its constituent capacities, anticipation, adaptation, and recovery. Recent research studies show that artificial intelligence techniques can be a solution to enhance all these constituent capacities, but implementations are still scarce, and research efforts are dispersed. This work presents a roadmap to help guide research efforts in the quest for resilience, based on a recent literature review.
Sanchis, R., Arias-Vargas, M., & Poler, R. (2023). Learning Organisational Resilience through the CONTINUITY Project. In INTED2023 Proceedings (pp. 5746-5753). IATED.
Abstract: In these uncertain times we are living in, it is increasingly necessary to be resilient in order to face extraordinary situations, adapt and recover efficiently. From a business point of view, enterprises have been particularly affected by different recent events such as COVID-19, wars, among others, which have threatened their business continuity. With the aim of supporting organisations to manage emerging threats and guarantee business continuity, the CONTINUITY project arises. This project: “Business Continuity Managers Training Platform” belongs to the ERASMUS + programme, specifically to the action: KA220-VET – cooperation partnerships in vocational education and training, with a duration of 24 months. The general objective of CONTINUITY is to create an appropriate vocational education and training, horizontal to all sectors and independent from the geographical and political context, intrinsically transnational, able to train the business continuity manager as a professional figure with an in-depth knowledge of business continuity issues and related governance frameworks, best-practices and protocols. The training programme of CONTINUITY will promote interactive peer activities with a mix of vocational job skills in digital transitions, combining informal learning (daily life activities and not structured as learning objectives, timing or resources) and non-formal (planned activities not designed as learning). To spark target groups curiosity and awareness about real-world problems, CONTINUITY will promote work-based learning opportunities: experience in the enterprises labour market, application to their industrial reality and mobility with online and face-to-face workshops. The training programme consists of 5 modules:
(i) organisational resilience;
(ii) business continuity;
(iii) crisis management;
(iv) supply chain resilience; and
(v) cyber resilience.
All these modules will be integrated into the online training platform. Thus, the aim of this article is to describe, in detail, the activities performed to develop the first of the modules and the resulting learning resources developed focused on organisational resilience, to contribute to raising awareness on resilience and to encourage target groups to implement preparedness and recovery plans.
Arias-Vargas, M., Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2022, July). Gamification for Awareness of the Importance of Enterprise and Supply Chain Resilience. In the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management (pp. 346-351). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Abstract: Enterprise and supply chain resilience has become a must in the business world due to the increasing number of disruptive events that have modified companies’ environments. To cope with this strategic must, organizations must evaluate their workers’ knowledge and awareness about this matter. In this work, these attributes are assessed using gamification: a trivia game to measure essential knowledge and awareness. Strengthening these attributes is a strong starting point for organizations to enhance their resilient capacity as a key goal in their strategy.
Arias-Vargas, M., Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2022, July). Gamification for Decision-Making When Facing Disruptive Events in the Supply Chain. In the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management (pp. 309-314). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Abstract: During the last five years, supply chains around the globe have been stressed by significant disruptive events. Consequently, companies have been incurring in high inventory stockouts, which affects significantly companies performance. As a result, enterprise and supply chain resilience must be considered as an essential component in companies strategies in order to make the right decisions when facing disruptive events. The decision-making process can be costly and risky if decisions are made by trial and error, misleading the course of organizations. The objective of this work is to obtain a robust methodology for testing a decision-making process by means of a simulation game that takes into account people, products and disruptive events.
Arias-Vargas, M., Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2022, July). Development and Application of a Specialized Set of Engineering Tools to Enhance Enterprise and Supply Chain Resilience. In the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management (pp. 352-357). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Abstract: Complexity, dynamism, sudden changes, and disruptive events (COVID-19, Ukraine war, etc.) have become the norm in the current business world. Companies and their related supply chains are trying to adapt to a business reality fed by disruptive events to try to guarantee their survival in the long term. It is essential to highlight that some disruptive events are more predictable than others. However, even for the non-predictable events, early symptoms will facilitate their detection. Thus, it is critical to provide quantitative tools to identify patterns and warn companies to activate resilience plans and preventive actions. These tools should include features such as multivariate analysis for pattern recognition, disruptive events prediction, and prioritization of the preventive actions related to each disruptive event to support companies in enhancing their resilience capacity. In addition, the entire organization must be committed and convinced of the benefits that improved resilience will bring. For this reason, it is also critical to develop mechanisms to make workers aware of the importance of being resilient and promote the implementation of the resilience dimension in their quality systems, which is an opportunity for an organization to get formally certified in this area.
Sanchis, R., Marcucci, G., Poler, R., & Ciarapica, F. E. (2022). Business Continuity Training: Educational Programme Proposal. Ifac-papersonline, 55(10), 2209-2214.
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has had and is having devastating effects on the health of the population, but also on the economic health of companies and their supply chains. The old paradigms of the commercial and industrial world have been inevitably disrupted: global supply chains have shifted from a system based on efficiency to one oriented towards resilience. Business continuity has become a key activity to be considered in all business processes. Nevertheless, specific studies to train highly qualified professionals in Business Continuity are rare. Therefore, this paper suggests the topics and subjects to be included in a university educational programme proposal to train business continuity managers. This proposal can contribute into building digital education readiness supporting the business continuity manager training, as one of the most important weapons of responsiveness, adaptability, and flexibility to provide companies resilience during next black swan events.
Marcucci, G., Sanchis, R., Ciarapica, F., & Bevilacqua, M. (2022). Development of a semi-structured questionnaire to analyse supply chain resilience in the post-COVID business era. Ifac-papersonline, 55(10), 1858-1863.
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has had and is having devastating effects on the health of the population, but also on the economic health of companies and their supply chains. The old paradigms of the commercial and industrial world have been inevitably disrupted: global supply chains have shifted from a system based on efficiency to one oriented towards resilience. To this regard, the present research paper aims at investigating how Supply Chain Resilience will evolve in the new paradigms of the post-COVID business era. In order to contribute to this investigation, a semi-structured questionnaire is developed, through a structured research approach. Future research lines will be based on conducting this questionnaire as a basis for a targeted survey, analysable through association rules.
Arias-Vargas, M., Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2022). Impact of Predicting Disruptive Events in Supply Planning for Enterprise Resilience. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 55(10), 1864-1869.
Abstract: For several years, companies have been aware of the importance of supply planning, but extreme events like pandemics and the financial crisis have shifted the attention towards planning for resilience. To be resilient, companies need to be prepared and to become adaptative and reactive in the presence of disruptive events. Combining the capacity of Third Party Logistics providers (3PLs) with the company’s supply capacity can help them achieve these components of resilience. Moreover, the planning process should allow for modeling the effects of disruptive events or, even better, allow for predicting these events. This work aims to create awareness of the importance of disruptive event modeling and prediction as essential components of the supply and demand planning processes in the quest for resilience. We present an optimization model that allows for flexible supply planning, generating scenarios with mixed capacity combinations (internal and outsourced) to minimize supply costs. This model can help quantify the impact of disruptive events on the demand pattern; we present a scenario where an unexpected significant rise in the demand for a month occurs and generates stockouts and related costs due to the lack of resilience. Future research will complement this model with predictive capabilities.
Sanchis, R., Cruz-Valdivieso, T., Marcucci, G., & Poler, R. (2022). Resilient Roadmap to Minimise the Impact of COVID-19 in the Spanish Enterprises. Ifac-papersonline, 55(10), 1870-1875.
Abstract: If something has failed in the management of COVID-19 crisis, this has been the lack of resilience to anticipate, adapt and recover from this event. This paper analyses the impact of COVID-19 in different sectors in Spain, highlighting which ones were more negatively affected by the pandemic after the first COVID-19 wave and which ones created growth and employment during the recovery phase. In this sense, the most negative impacted sectors were culture, tourism and retail while tobacco, pharmaceuticals computer, electronic and optical products sectors pushed the Spanish economy towards recovery. Moreover, the impact of COVID-19 in different aspects such as employment, workers’ health, reputation, productivity, among others was also studied. The results reveal that firms invested a lot of time in organising and restructuring work planning to adapt to the new constraints. Finally, based on the findings about the most impacted sectors and the most negatively affected aspects, a set of dimensions and policies are proposed in a roadmap to support the improvement of enterprise resilience capacity to face up to crisis situations such as the one caused by COVID-19.
Sanchis, R., Marcucci, G., Alarcón, F., & Poler, R. (2021). Knowledge Registration Module Design for Enterprise Resilience Enhancement. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 54(1), 1029-1034.
Abstract: The present situation characterized by the coronavirus pandemic has made businesses to be aware about the importance of being resilient to face undesirable impacts like the one caused by this pandemic. One of the constituent capacities of enterprise resilience is the recovery ability to bounce back and restore the operations after disruptions’ occurrence. This paper is focused on the recovery perspective of enterprise resilience and its enhancement through knowledge registration. This research proposes the design of the Knowledge Registration Module addressed to the register of valuable information at different knowledge level with the main aim to reuse this piece of information to facilitate the recovery process when the same or an unexpected similar disruptive event occurs. Future research lines will be based on applying the knowledge approach to real cases to study the influence of knowledge management in the enhancement of enterprise resilience.
Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2020). Resiliencia empresarial en época de pandemia. Boletín de Estudios Económicos, 75(231), 501-520.
Abstract: Cada día las empresas tienen que hacer frente a un mayor número de amenazas debido a su propia naturaleza cambiante y al gran dinamismo del entorno en el que operan. Un ejemplo de este entorno inestable e incierto es el provocado por la pandemia COVID-19 que ha tenido y está teniendo efectos devastadores en la salud de la población, pero también en la salud económica de las empresas. Para hacer frente a esta situación, los expertos apuntan a la capacidad resiliente de las empresas, entendida como la capacidad para anticiparse y prepararse ante las amenazas, adaptarse al nuevo contexto y recuperarse una vez que la amenaza ya ha acontecido y ha impactado de manera negativa. El artículo realiza un repaso a las capacidades constituyentes de la resiliencia empresarial y detalla la respuesta de las empresas españolas ante la COVID-19 en materia de resiliencia empresarial.
Sanchis, R., Duran-Heras, A., & Poler, R. (2020). Optimising the Preparedness Capacity of Enterprise Resilience Using Mathematical Programming. Mathematics, 8(9), 1596.
Abstract: In today’s volatile business arena, companies need to be resilient to deal with the unexpected. One of the main pillars of enterprise resilience is the capacity to anticipate, prevent and prepare in advance for disruptions. From this perspective, the paper proposes a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model for optimising preparedness capacity. Based on the proposed reference framework for enterprise resilience enhancement, the MILP optimises the activation of preventive actions to reduce proneness to disruption. To do so, the objective function minimizes the sum of the annual expected cost of disruptive events after implementing preventive actions and the annual cost of such actions. Moreover, the algorithm includes a constraint capping the investment in preventive actions and an attenuation formula to deal with the joint savings produced by the activation of two or more preventive actions on the same disruptive event. The management and business rationale for proposing the MILP approach is to keep it as simple and comprehensible as possible so that it does not require highly mathematically skilled personnel, thus allowing top managers at enterprises of any size to apply it effortlessly. Finally, a real pilot case study was performed to validate the mathematical formulation.
Sanchis, R., Canetta, L., & Poler, R. (2020). A conceptual reference framework for enterprise resilience enhancement. Sustainability, 12(4), 1464.
Abstract: Enterprise resilience is a key capacity to guarantee enterprises’ long-term continuity. This paper proposes the enterprise resilience Conceptual Reference Framework to characterize enterprise resilience capacity. The framework is composed of 71 disruptive events that enterprises consider as endangerments to their continuity. The framework also comprises constituent capabilities of enterprise resilience in terms of preparedness and recovery capabilities and elements that support the transition from the AS IS situation to the TO BE one, which are preventive actions (for preparedness capability) and knowledge registration actions (for recovery capability). From the preparedness perspective, 403 preventive actions are currently defined. Each preventive action is specific for every disruptive event. However, it is worth noting that a preventive action can also be applied to different disruptive events. From the recovery perspective, the proposed framework indicates knowledge registration related to (i) the occurrence of disruptive events;(ii) the recovery actions performed to re-establish the normal enterprise operation level. Further research lines are addressed to develop quantitative methods and tools to assess the extent of enterprises’ resilience following the foundations of the proposed conceptual framework.
Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2019). Enterprise resilience assessment—A quantitative approach. Sustainability, 11(16), 4327.
Abstract: Enterprise resilience is a key capacity to guarantee enterprises’ long-term continuity. This paper proposes a quantitative approach to enhance enterprise resilience by selecting optimal preventive actions to be activated to cushion the impact of disruptive events and to improve preparedness capability, one of the pillars of the enterprise resilience capacity. The proposed algorithms combine the dynamic programming approach with attenuation formulas to model real improvements when a combined set of preventive actions is activated for the same disruptive event. A numerical example is presented that shows remarkable reductions in the expected annual cost due to potential disruptive events.
Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2019). Origins of Disruptions Sources Framework to Support the Enterprise Resilience Analysis. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 52(13), 2062-2067.
Abstract: The business environment is increasingly unstable and enterprises have to face more frequently threats that put the business continuity at risk. In light of this, enterprises need to be resilient enough to manage these undesired situations. The analysis of enterprise resilience is a very difficult task, and since the beginning supporting approaches to guide this task are required. Based on the Categorisation Framework of Disruptions developed by Sanchis and Poler (2014), the present research aims at defining and characterizing the origins of disruptions sources to classify the potential disruptive events. To do so, the origins of the disruptions sources framework is defined as a supporting mechanism to make available to both, companies and researchers, valuable information in an organised manner to facilitate the retrieval of the necessary data to assess the enterprise resilience capacity and focus the research on the most critical origins of disruptions sources.
Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2019). Mitigation proposal for the enhancement of enterprise resilience against supply disruptions. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 52(13), 2833-2838.
Abstract: The current context is characterised by growing uncertainty, insecurities and risks. To overcome this situation, enterprises need to be resilient enough to guarantee its business continuity. This research is focused on the preparedness capacity, one of the three constituent capacities of enterprise resilience. To be prepared for the unexpected, it is necessary to identify, the most critical disruptive events companies face from a supply side and propose mitigation actions to provide companies with a set of alternatives to support the enhancement of the preparedness capacity of enterprise resilience. This research offers valuable information about both aspects; an analysis of the most worrisome supply disruptive events and a proposal of preventive actions as mitigation policies.
Schoen, Q., Sanchis, R., Poler, R., Lauras, M., Fontanili, F. and Truptil, S.(2017). Categorisation of the Main Disruptive Events in the Sensitive Products Transportation Supply Chains. International Journal of Production Management and Engineering, 6(2), 79-89.
Abstract: The upcoming logistic environment is about to modify deeply the way we supply products. In fact, some new trends are going to require more and more agility between a large number of stakeholders in open and dynamic networks. This should be possible to achieve thanks to new data collection and treatment abilities. Considering this moving technological and logistic environment, it appears necessary to define and categorize more specifically the main disruptive events that can affect a supply chain. In fact, amount of data are collected on the field and must be helpful to make relevant decisions in case of disruption. In order to understand automatically what these data mean, it is necessary to detect and classify the disruptive events in order to find the best adaptation. This paper focuses on the sensitive products’ supply chains, that are facing with agility high requirements, based on their ability to detect disruptive events. We take as an example the blood supply chain.
Sanchis, R., Poler, R. (2014, November). La Resiliencia Empresarial como ventaja competitiva. In Creando sinergias: II Congreso I+ D+ i Campus de Alcoi, Alicante, 11 de noviembre de 2014 (pp. 25-28). Compobell, SL.
Resumen: Las empresas están cada vez más expuestas a amenazas, imprevistos y situaciones disruptivas que provocan alteraciones en su rendimiento empresarial. Las empresas precisan ser resilientes para dar una respuesta rápida y hacer frente ante dichas disrupciones. La resiliencia empresarial es una capacidad clave para hacer frente de manera sostenible y eficiente a las disrupciones, de forma que sea fuente de ventaja competitiva frente a aquellas empresas menos resilientes. Para ello, se precisa de mecanismos que analicen el grado de resiliencia empresarial, para obtener información relevante de cómo implementar un proyecto de mejora de la resiliencia empresarial como factor clave no solo para aumentar la competitividad sino para asegurar la continuidad y supervivencia empresarial a largo plazo.
Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2014). Enterprise resilience assessment: a categorisation framework of disruptions. In Dirección y organización (Vol. 54, pp. 45-53). Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
Resumen: Las empresas están cada vez más expuestas a vulnerabilidades debido a la gran incertidumbre del contexto actual, y por ello necesitan estar preparadas para hacer frente a disrupciones. Si una disrupción impacta en una empresa, ésta tendrá que adaptarse a la nueva situación y recuperarse rápidamente para alcanzar su estado normal de operación. Esta capacidad se define como resiliencia empresarial. Con el fin de evaluar cuán resiliente es una empresa, es necesario analizar qué provoca la falta de resiliencia: las disrupciones. Este trabajo propone un marco de categorización de disrupciones, como punto de partida para evaluar la resiliencia empresarial.
Abstract: Currently, enterprises are more exposed to vulnerabilities and threats due to the recent and uncertain context and this makes enterprises need the capacity to be ready and prepared to face up to more and more expected and unexpected events. If a disruption impacts on an enterprise, the company will have to adapt to this new situation and try to recover as soon as possible to its normal state of operation. This ability has been defined as Enterprise Resilience. The topic of enterprise resilience is an under-researched concept since there are few studies in the literature, which focus on evaluating and assessing this business capacity. Moreover, enterprise resilience is a new innovative research area that evolves from the traditional risk management to a more operational vision of how to manage disruptions. In order to assess how resilient an enterprise is, it is necessary to understand, assess and analyse the factors that affect enterprise resilience. Therefore, the first step is to focus on the trigger that causes this lack of enterprise resilience: the disruptions. This will lead to: (i) support enterprises to be aware of the potential disruptions in which the company has less adaptative ability and (ii) take appropriate decisions to avoid the occurrence of disruptions and/or to mitigate the impact of them once that already happened. To do so, disruptions should be categorized to provide an organized structure that will be the input for further research. This paper proposes a categorisation framework of disruptions which is the starting point to evaluate the resilience capacity of enterprises.
Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2013). Definition of a framework to support strategic decisions to improve enterprise resilience. IFAC Proceedings Volumes, 46(9), 700-705.
Abstract: Enterprise resilience is a complex concept that involves different properties and research areas. Based on the literature review, three main properties related to enterprise resilience have been identified: vulnerability, adaptative capacity and recovery ability. On the other hand, an analysis of the current literature approaches to measure and assess enterprise resilience has been described. However, approaches that assess and measure simultaneously the three main properties of enterprise resilience have not been found. To bridge this gap, the paper presents the definition of a conceptual framework to support strategic decisions related to enterprise resilience by defining the main research areas of the identified enterprise resilience properties to provide the basis for further research.
Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2012). Measuring Enterprise Resilience. Enterprise Interoperability: I-ESA’12 Proceedings, 139-144.
Abstract: In the current context of crisis, enterprises should be agile, flexible, dynamic and proactive, to react to any disruptive event in order to change, adapt and/or recover quickly by aligning their strategy, processes, technology and personnel to achieve their goals. In short, enterprises need to be resilient. However, there are no detailed methodologies and/or approaches currently developed that assess the enterprise resilience to ensure their ability to respond to the current ongoing and increasingly severe changes and maximize enterprises performance. This paper reviews the current status of the research related to Enterprise resilience and defines its components for further research.
Sanchis, R., Poler, R., & Lario, F. C. (2012, July). Identification and analysis of Disruptions: the first step to understand and measure Enterprise Resilience. In 6th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management (pp. 424-431).
Abstract: Currently, organizations are increasing their awareness about the need to be prepared and ready to face up to disruptions. Enterprises should be agile, flexible, dynamic and proactive, to react to any disruption in order to change, adapt and/or recover quickly. This paper reviews the enterprise resilience concept and shows the main characteristics of disruptions, in order to identify the foundations of the aspects that impacts on the capacity of resilience of the enterprises. The paper also shows some techniques as initial attempts to analyse the level of enterprise vulnerability and proposes a combination of these two methods to define the first stage of a methodological framework to asses enterprise resilience.
Sanchis, R., & Poler, R. (2011, September). Medición de la resiliencia empresarial ante eventos disruptivos. Una revisión del estado del arte. In V International Conference On Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management (pp. 104-113).
Resumen: Las organizaciones son entidades dinámicas que están constantemente adaptándose al cambio, bien sea debido como consecuencia del entorno que las rodea, a requerimientos internos o a nuevas situaciones dentro de la organización que requieren su adecuación y respuesta. Por ello, se precisa de empresas ágiles, flexibles, rápidas, dinámicas y proactivas que, ante cualquier contingencia crítica, puedan cambiar, adaptarse y/o recuperarse rápidamente alineando su estrategia, procesos, tecnología y personas para la consecución de sus objetivos, la maximización de su desempeño y el aseguramiento de su capacidad de respuesta y adaptación a los continuos y cada vez más agudos cambios. Dicha habilidad ha sido definida como resiliencia.