Exploring the role of artificial intelligence in building production resilience: learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic

The ever-happening disruptive events interrupt the operationalisation of manufacturing organisations resulting in stalling the production flow and depleting societies with products. Advancements in cutting-edge technologies, viz. blockchain, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, digital twin, etc. have attracted the practitioners’ attention to overcome such saddled conditions. This study attempts to explore the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in building the resilience of production function at manufacturing organisations during a COVID-19 pandemic. In this regard, a decision support system comprising an integrated voting analytical hierarchy process (VAHP) and Bayesian network (BN) method is developed. Initially, through a comprehensive literature review, the critical success factors (CSFs) for implementing AI are determined. Further, using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) based VAHP, CSFs are prioritised to determine the prominent ones. Finally, the machine learning based BN method is adopted to predict and understand the influential CSFs that help achieve the highest production resilience. The present research is one of the early attempts to know the essence of AI and bridge the interplay between AI and production resilience during COVID-19. This study can support academicians, practitioners, and decision-makers in assessing the AI adoption in manufacturing organisations and evaluate the impact of different CSFs of AI on production resilience.