A fuzzy-based multi criteria decision making approach for supply chain risk assessment in Indian pharmaceutical industry

Being a highly significant part of healthcare system, developing the nation's pharmaceutical industry, supplying medicines across the world needed to develop risk‐averse supply chain to protect global health of human beings and businesses. However, the successful accomplishment of pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC); production and business activities are relatively difficult due to involvement of different risks. Therefore, identification of risks and their subsequent analysis of PSC are very important. Any risks affecting the pharmaceutical corporations could interrupt supply medicines and the health system's effectiveness. This paper proposes a multi criteria decision making (MCDM) methodology based on fuzzy AHP approach to prioritise and rank risks in PSC. This approach is also suitable in analysing the expert's judgements and uncertainty involved in the process of risk assessment. This study identifies 24 risks under five major risk measures of Indian PSC through relevant literature and experts opinions. The results of the study would be beneficial for industries in managing and reducing the consequences of the risks in PSC. The analysis of the results indicates that supply and supplier risks are the most important risks in Indian PSC. Sensitivity analysis is also performed to test the robustness of the proposed approach.