Analysis of the agility of the automotive industry supply chain in times of COVID-19: a case study

In the early stages of the corona virus pandemic, business environment was changing rapidly. The Moroccan automotive industry was one of the export sectors most affected negatively by the corona crisis; it collapsed during the three months of confinement and the pandemic has created immense uncertainties in demand and disrupted global supply chains. Indeed, to save the automotive industry, Morocco relies on its competitiveness and challenges current supply models for supply chain agility in order to better prepare for future disruptions. Achieving a competitive edge requires aligning company with suppliers and customers as well as working together to achieve agility, organizationally, strategically and individually. However, agile supply chains are the most powerful competitive vehicles of the manufacturing companies. To help automakers deal with the many challenges associated with the pandemic, let's present this research on the key enablers that will need to be monitored as the situation evolves. Thus, our article presents an original approach which, by linking the competitive priorities, agile supply chain attributes and enablers, aims at evaluates and enhances supply chain agility of a Moroccan automotive factory. Let's adopt fuzzy quality function deployment (FQFD) approach and, in particular, the two houses of quality (HOQ) with a fuzzy scale in order to identify the most appropriate enablers to be implemented by the factory. This evaluation demonstrates that there are three enablers needing maximum attention: process compliance, logistics and distribution capabilities and supportive information technology. Then, the supply chain agility improvement should be based on these enablers