Recover to Discover the New Normal: A Case Study of Automotive Supply Chain Restoration after the COVID-19 Disruption

Under an onslaught of COVID-19, the automotive supply chain of a well-known manufacturer in Wuhan came to a screeching halt. We investigate the process of restarting a supply chain that had gone cold. There have been studies that looked at the process of ramping up new product lines, but to the best of our knowledge there have never been a study that looked at reviving a supply chain after a complete shutdown. We conduct an inductive case study involving a three-tier supply chain—the auto manufacturer, a China-Japan joint venture company, in the middle, with four suppliers to the upstream and four dealers to the downstream. Our analysis identifies four main contributing factors, workforce resilience, digital competence, supply chain rapport and government support, that have led to a successful recovery of the supply chain. The propositions developed from the analysis characterize the relative importance and complementarity of these factors, as well as their spillover effects to the new normal post recovery. These findings help enrich the existing theory of supply chain resilience by shining light on the importance of people and technology in supply chains, when recovering from a complete shutdown and discovering a new normal.