Examining the resiliency of intertwined supply networks: a jury-rigging perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the salience of different supply networks merging together to provide critical products in short supply. The automotive supply network and the medical device supply network, for instance, became intertwined to meet rising demands for ventilators. As such, coming to the fore is a search mechanism, based on recombination of multiple components, conceptualized as jury-rigging behavior. Designing and changing the interdependencies across firms/supply chains become relevant. Drawing on complex adaptive systems and Ashby's law of requisite variety, we use a computational model to examine these mechanisms' isolated and combined effect on supply chain network resiliency. Our results show statistically significant difference in the adaptiveness and mortality rate between a jury-rigged supply chain network and a non-jury-rigged one. In particular, the effect of jury-rigging is diminished by the level of coupling among the supply chains.