Assessing Strategies for Effective Distribution of Surgical Masks due to COVID-19

The spread of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) has asignificant impact on many supply chains. One of them is the surgical mask supply chain in Thailand of which the demand had beensuddenly increased; however, the manufacturers and importers were unable to meet the required demand, resulting in the disruption of the surgical mask supply chain. The purpose of this research is to assess the effects of supply chain disruption underthe COVID-19 pandemic, and to propose strategiesto improve the supply chain through application of mathematical programming that reflectsactual data and flow of the materials and finished goods. The decision considers the population of each province, pandemic severity level, and transportation distance. The mathematical model is solved by CBC (COIN-OR Branch-and-Cut) in MS Excel. The results are then computed as a service level value to indicatethe impact of the supply chain disruption. Furthermore, several countermeasure strategies were tested by varying 3 factors that were a ban onthe export of surgical masks, the increase in the manufacturing capacity of the masks, and assuming that there was domestic production of the melt-blown fabric, which was a type of nonwoven fabric, in Thailand. The research results indicated that based on the actual data the average service level of the baseline situation with no disruption was 82.68 percent. In the disrupted situation, the average service level dropped to 62.33 percent. After applying the countermeasure strategies, the best strategy improved the average service level to77.79 percent by which there must be simultaneous increase in the domestic manufacturing capacity of the surgical masks andmelt-blown fabric for 25 percent and 20 percent,respectively.