Viable and Resilient Design of the Panela Supply Chain: A System Dynamics Study

Abstract

Agri-food supply chains face highly uncertain environments (climate, logistics, demand) that amplify domino effects under local disruptions. Beyond punctual resilience, viability emphasizes the system’s sustained adaptive capacity, integrating agility and sustainability over time. This study proposes and evaluates a viability framework for the panela supply chain that integrates resilience, agility, and sustainability, using System Dynamics (SD) and the immune system analogy. An SD model was developed to represent the agricultural, transformation, homogenization, and packaging stages. Five scenarios were analyzed: (i) baseline chain, (ii) agricultural disruption, (iii) transportation disruption, (iv) sudden demand surge, and (v) reduced storage capacity. Performance indicators (service level, transportation costs, and inventories by stage) and a Supply Chain Resilience Index (SCRI) combining service and normalized cost were calculated. The chain exhibits greater fragility under shocks at the agricultural stage (service 0.543) and transportation stage (service 0.746), with domino effects on homogenization and packaging. The demand surge showed the highest resilience (service 0.996; SCRI≈0.999) due to coordinated production and inventory response. Reduced storage capacity significantly increased transportation costs (≈USD 105.1 million) despite a high service level (0.93), revealing a service–cost trade-off. The framework translates immunological principles (barriers, passive redundancy, adaptive activation) into mitigation inventory policies, logistical flexibility, and contingency plans, while providing a synthetic indicator (SCRI) for tactical decision-making. The chain’s viability depends on securing the agricultural stage, optimizing buffers and mitigation inventories, and coordinating transportation under storage restrictions. The SD–immune-based approach facilitates the design of anticipatory responses and cost-effective recovery paths.