Reflecting Coronavirus Outbreak in the Risk Management of the Apparel Supply Chain

The Coronavirus outbreak has instigated demand and supply interruption risks that influence supply chain (SC) management, implying an inevitability to foster the agility to ease the risks. The article investigates the complex and systemic effects of the Coronavirus outbreak on the global apparel SCs from the perspective of risk management in multinational business. This article proposes risk management in the global apparel SCs during the Coronavirus outbreak using four steps based on an in-depth literature review. Despite several SC management (SCM) approaches, this article emphasizes equalling the lean SCM versus the agile SCM (with a little about risk-hedging SCM and responsive SCM) as these are the foremost SCM styles that the apparel industry adopts the most. Furthermore, this article exposed the inadequacy of the lean-SCM framework caused by the absence of the SC transparency due to the increase in demand unpredictability identified even before the Coronavirus epidemic. On the other hand, the agile-SCM framework tackles this problem through augmenting the supplier-buyer connections for better information swap, but it also involves a linked upsurge in inventory cost and business stock. Thus, this article delivers several approaches that businesses can apply to alleviate the risks and discover key areas for upcoming works, considering downstream and upstream stakeholders in the apparel SC. © 1973-2011 IEEE.