Managing COVID-19 food supply chain disruptions in India: a case study of public distribution system

To address the food security mission for the economically weaker sections of the population, the government of India has established a Public Distribution System to distribute essential food across the country. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has created many challenges and risks in the food supply chain. To manage such disruptions, we developed a simulation model to capture the dynamic behaviour of the pandemic. We analyse the impact by considering three events: increased demand, partial shutdown of facilities, and the COVID-19 pandemic to present supply chain vulnerability. Then, we proposed the three risk mitigation strategies: Redundancy, Responsiveness, and Flexibility to increase the resilience of the food supply chain. The simulation results reveal that the Redundancy strategy is more efficient than the Responsiveness and Flexibility risk mitigation approach. The presented study will help policymakers, academics, and practitioners to mitigate pandemic risk and provide key recommendations for managing the food supply chain.