Optimising 4IR Digital Supply Chain Technologies to Enhance the Caribbean Banks’ Recovery from the Hurricanes

Even if banks often introduce an array of strategies to recover from a crisis, the effectiveness of the supply chain system that procures and delivers the required equipment and materials is often not considered as an essential part of the bank crisis recovery strategies. In the Caribbean banking sector, this often causes a sluggish supply chain management system that affects the procurement and delivery of the required building reconstruction materials, computers, and all the required banking equipment for the banks to quickly recover from the crisis. To address such challenges, this study used qualitative interviews to explore the opinions of purposively selected bank managers from different selected banks in the Caribbean region with the motive of assessing how 4IR digital supply chain technologies are optimized to enhance the Caribbean banks’ recovery from the hurricanes. In the event of hurricanes, findings revealed most of the Caribbean banks to experience a lot of damage to the banking infrastructure, computers, documents, and equipment. However, to improve supply chain efficiency to influence the effectiveness of the procurement of bank recovery materials and equipment, interviews revealed the major impediments of 4IR digital technologies’ usage to arise from an unsupportive management approach, cultural impediments, and poor maintenance. To improve the efficiency of supply chain management during crisis recovery situations, it is suggested that banking managers must consider adopting Liker’s (2020) “Lean-Digital Hybrid Supply Chain Model”. Derived from the Toyota Production System (TPS), Liker’s (2020) “Lean-Digital Hybrid Supply Chain Model” proposes the creation of a “Lean-Digital Hybrid Supply Chain Model” that integrates the use of lean principles with the application of digital supply chain management technologies like robotics to improve process automation and artificial intelligence to improve inventory management. But given the increasingly more instrumental roles of 4IR digital technologies, it is suggested that future studies must still continue exploring the best models for optimizing 4IR digital technologies in the global supply chain management processes.