Angel Singh
Graphic Era School of Management, Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.

Bharti Ramtiyal
Faculty of Management and Commerce, Poornima University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.

Sachin Ghai
Graphic Era School of Management, Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.

Shubha Johri
Area of Marketing, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.

DOI https://doi.org/10.33889/IJMEMS.2026.11.3.053

  ;

Abstract

Supply Chains (SC) are undergoing rapid transformation with the advent of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies. In highly dynamic and volatile market conditions, Supply Chain Flexibility (SCF) that is the capability to adapt and respond to dynamic changes in the market environment and Supply Chain Sustainability (SCS) that is the ability of managing SCs to meet sustainability requirements and improve performance have become strategically critical. Despite growing interest, limited research has quantitatively examined which factors create the greatest synergy between SCF and SCS. This study addresses this gap by quantitatively prioritizing Organizational Practices (OP) and Underlying Drivers (UD) in the SC of pharmaceutical context using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Findings reveal that OP such as ‘Integration of sustainability principles into SCF’ and ‘Instrumental, interconnected and intelligent SC’ holds the highest relative importance, demonstrating its dominant influence on the decision context and UD such as ‘Transparency, Traceability and Visibility’ holds the highest relative significance, exhibiting its dominant effect in the decision environment, followed by ‘Technological changes/ adoption’ and ‘Resilience’ have the highest impact on achieving simultaneous improvements in flexibility and sustainability. The results provide a structured decision hierarchy, highlighting actionable areas for managerial investment and resource allocation. By identifying and ranking these key enablers, the study demonstrates that SCF and SCS can co-evolve rather than compete, offering both practical guidance for pharmaceutical managers and a foundation for future research on optimizing SC performance in the digital era.

Keywords- Supply chain flexibility, Flexibility, Supply chain, Supply chain sustainability, Sustainability, Industry 4.0.

Citation

Singh, A., Ramtiyal, B., Ghai, S., & Johri, S. (2026). Analytic Hierarchy Process based Prioritization of Organizational Practices and Drivers for Supply Chain Flexibility and Sustainability in Pharmaceutical Sector. International Journal of Mathematical, Engineering and Management Sciences, 11(3), 1291-1313. https://doi.org/10.33889/IJMEMS.2026.11.3.053.