Supply chain management during the Covid-19 pandemic : strategies and lessons for imroving logistics services

The coronavirus pandemic affected all areas of daily lives. One of them was the logistics industry. The crisis caused increased lead times, delays in the supply chain, and rising costs of supplies. In this regard, companies had to revise their supply chain management strategies and adapt them to the new normal. The thesis theoretical section consists of an initial concept of the logistics industry and supply chain management. The theory is limited by the three sectors of study: supply chain management strategies, logistics barriers, technologies and digitalization. Those fields of study can provide the actual picture of the situation in the logistics industry and highlight the correlation between them in developing a supply chain management strategy. The research was arranged on the basis of an analysis of the supply chain management strategies that various companies used during the pandemic. The main emphasis was dedicated to the qualitative method supported by the semi-structured interviews with dif-ferent companies that operate with supply chains. The interview findings were presented in the pivot table. Based on the analysis of the interview results, the main conclusions were that the size of the company, its period of operation on the market, and the location of the major suppliers were key factors in the successful adaptation of the new supply chain management strategy during the Covid-19 pandemic. The older and larger the company, the easier it was for it to survive the crisis when switching to local suppliers. The research can be considered as a small piece of the puzzle in future large studies at the time of the end of the pandemic. Therefore, businesses and companies can rely on the findings from this research when developing their own supply chain management strategies and possible barrier assessments of companies