An integrated Fuzzy MCDM Approach for Evaluation of Barriers in Implementing LARS Paradigms in Supply Chain

Swift growth in industry and continuously increasing competitiveness around the world have necessitated the industries to adopt new paradigms. In today’s competitive scenario, all firms need to be more efficient, responsive, reliable, resilient, and sustainable. The need for the adoption of these paradigms has increased manifold due to the current pandemic. In the current situation where the Supply Chains (SC) all over the world are affected, a strategic and innovative rethinking is required by the business community to conduct their operations smoothly. For this purpose, simultaneous adoption of a combination of Lean, Agile, Resilient, and Sustainable (LARS) practices may provide the expected result. The consolidated execution of these four different practices on the existing SC will result in huge benefits from a strategic perspective since (i) lean focuses on minimizing cost and elimination of waste, (ii) agility results in fast response to customer demands, (iii) resilience focuses on the longevity of the SC, and (iv) sustainability is achieved by adopting triple bottom line (TBL) approach. However, there are numerous barriers which make it difficult to implement the LARS paradigms jointly in any SC. The aim of the present study is to identify and determine the inter-relationships between various barriers and classify them into “cause” and “effect” groups. An Integrated Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) approach has been used for the analysis of barriers, and the fuzzy set theory has been used to deal with the uncertainty in terms of vague and imprecise available information. The fuzzy-Delphi method has been used for the selection of critical barriers by taking experts’ opinions. The fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (Fuzzy-DEMATEL) method is used to find relationships between the barriers, highlighting the hidden dependencies between them which provides a clear understanding of the areas which should be carefully planned while adopting LARS paradigms in SCM. The findings of the present analysis can be used by practitioners of any industry.