1 Introduction

In recent years, risk management has obtained the attention of researchers in various sectors as manufacturing units, healthcare, finance, and supply chain management [1]. The technological shifts, globalization, and innovation in the growing business environment raise the occurrence of risk factors in supply chain management. Globalization and outsourcing practices directly influence the supply chain processes and operations such as operational cost and responsiveness [2, 3]. Thus, to avoid unfavorable influence on supply chain operations, risk management is considered an essential component of supply chain management [4].

The conventional supply chain and the Halal supply chain (HSC) tolerate certain risks that are necessary to be managed. HSC produces Halal products and delivers to the final customer. The purpose of Halal supply chain management is to assure halal competence. The term halal integrity means the integrity of the material, production processes, and information associated with the products. Particularly, Halal products are considered for beverages, foods, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. This variety of products strongly relate to human health and Muslim belief [5]. This is why; various risks that affect the Halal supply chain might harm human health and poor brand image. HSC also faces different types of disruption, together with risks that relate to halal products [6, 7]. The attention of Halal supply chain management (HSCM) is to retain the halalness of products from the procurement stage to the consumption stage. To meet these objectives, many risks occur at the different stages of HSC that negatively disrupt the supply chain performance. Furthermore, the stakeholders or organizations might make an effort to cut the risks, to maintain integrity in HSC. Thus, risk management is a crucial part of Halal supply chain management to handle risk.

The literature illustrates several investigations have been conducted on risk management from different perspectives [8]. The conventional supply chain risk management (SCRM) analyzes the supply chain with a conventional supply risk management network. Specifically, the risk management framework deals with food supply chain risks such as food quality and safety [9,10,11].

Extensive work is being done in the SCRM area to manage and minimize the negative effects of risk development. Risk management with HSCs more crucial due to the problem of lawful integrity, but it is somewhat unexpected that HSC-related research has received relatively little attention. Similarly, it is important to address the risks associated with HSC and a survey should be conducted to fill this gap in the existing literature. Past studies suggest that approximately all risk management studies have a clear focus on factors related to sustainable development such as sustainable SCRM [12]. All aspects of supply chain risk are considered efficient risk management. Thus, in the sector of halal SCRM, the supply chain and all aspects of the two risks associated with HSC risk are considered effective HSC management. Therefore, the objective of this research is to determine the risks of HSCM. In particular, the main objectives of this study are:

  • Examine the present studies to analyze the risks of Halal supply chain management

  • Identify major risk factors in Halal supply chain management

  • Develop fuzzy BWM methods to prioritize the identified risk factors of the Halal supply chain.

2 Literature review

This section provides an understanding of Halal and risk management from the perspective of the Halal supply chain.

2.1 Halal: a brief introduction

Halal is a word in the Quran and Arabic that means legal, acceptable, permitted, or lawful. The term halal is associated with food in the Qur'an and Sunnah [13, 14]. The management of a halal food supply chain requires a concerted effort to recognize and increase the major sources of Islam, Sunnah, and the Quran. Halal emphasizes the compliance of Sharia law because it has a broad foundation and should not only target specific demographic beliefs. The Quran verses command every human being to consume halal products. These products are translated as: “O people! Eat of the lawful and pure things in the earth and follow not in the footsteps of Satan (Quran 2:168).”

2.2 Risk management in halal supply chain

The term risk has a long history of approximately 2400 years, utilizing the ability of the Athenians to identify and assess risk before making a decision [15]. Today, risk management concepts are being studied from a variety of perspectives, including production, marketing, management, and finance strategy. These various perspectives have different risk understandings. A better understanding of risk is uncertainty about the event [16]. From the management point of view, risk threatens to participate directly intended activity [17].

The literature reports several studies related to risk management from an HSCM perspective. Ali and Suleiman [18] described 6 types of halal integrity risks, including outsourcing/offshore risk, production risk, food-related risk, service risk, raw material risk, and logistics risk. The research also says that these risks may be better managed through supply chain integration. Ujang et al. [19] also identified risks in the halal lean meat supply chain and present strategies to mitigate risks at all stages of beef supply. Tieman [20] introduced a systematic risk prevention cycle for HSCs by mitigating the risks associated with halal integrity. The risk prevention cycle framework incorporates four stages: (re) monitoring, supply chain design, vertical and horizontal collaboration, and risk vulnerability assessment. Wahyuni et al. [21] conducted a study to determine halal risk and food safety in Indonesian chicken products. The study examined two chicken companies to identify key factors and issues of food safety and halal food risk. Haleem [5] analyzed significant risk factors associated with the halal food supply chain. They said that the risks associated with raw material integrity and supply are the most important [22].

They reviewed the literature from 1990 to 2018 in the context of food safety and Halal food supply through bibliometrics and network analyses. They found four influential clusters on food safety and two on Halal food. Secinaro et al. [23] examined 221 research articles related to Halal food using the SLR approach. Further, a quantitative method was developed to identify the important bibliometric factors (production process and quality of Halal food). Wahyuni et al. [24], the study proposed the Bayesian Network (BN) structure to identify the risks of Halal food and food safety. The results of this study revealed 19 integrated risks relate to Halal and food safety.

A large number of investigations have been carried out in the area of supply chain management related to risk management, however, research on risk management related to HSC is still in its early stages. This study was conducted to identify risk management from an HSC perspective. Apart from conventional supply chain risks such as planning risks, production risks, and demand risks, HSC includes several other risks that are important to ensure Halal integrity. HSCM's main emphasis is on halal integrity due to the purchasing of diverse raw materials/substances and outsourcing of its diverse operations from different suppliers around the world. The risks related to halal integrity may arise in the differences. And outsourcing diverse operations from different suppliers around the world supply chain stages, such as acid manufacturing, and logistics [25]. The various risks could lead to the production of non-Halal, poor quality, unhygienic consumable goods that could mutilate the brand reputation and influence operational efficiency. Additionally, the rise in risk events like market fluctuations, economic crises, outsourcing/offshoring, terrorism, recession, natural disaster, and wars make matters more complicated.

3 Methodology

3.1 Best worst method

MCDM methods have been utilized for solving problems in various fields such as supply chains, decision sciences, engineering, and operations in the manufacturing process. The best worst method (BWM) is an MCDM approach proposed by Rezaei [26]. It is an important method to prioritize and select the best and worst among the alternates. To prove the strength of BWM, the author compared BWM statistical results with AHP for the selection of mobile. The results indicated BWM was better than AHP. It becomes popular due to its distinguishing features like least comparisons matrices data required and high consistency among alternatives [27]. The steps of BWM to compute the weights of criteria are given in Appendix A.

3.2 Identification of risk related to Halal supply chain management

This study uses Scopus data to recognize major risk elements linked with HSC through a wide range of literature, including sustainable supply chain risk management, and food supply chain risk. To validate the risk elements, a brainstorming session was conducted with the expert’s panel. The experts’ panel consists of seven members, five experts from the industry that are working in the Halal supply chain located in Pakistan, and two experts from academics. The experts’ panel detail is provided in Appendix B.

In the beginning, 72 HSC risks were identified, discussed with the experts, and asked them to finalize the most important risk elements in terms of HSCM. After the expert's opinions, 42 risk factors were selected and The following seven categories are grouped, namely, market-related risks, sustainability-related risks, sourcing-related risks, logistics, and production-related risks, information technology-related risks, outsourcing, and planning related risks. The HSC risk with dimensions is shown in Table 1. The proposed research framework is presented in (Fig. 1).

Table 1 Risk dimensions related to risk elements of Halal supply chain management
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Fig. 1
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Methodological framework for research

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3.3 Calculation of risk elements weights

The decision-making team consisted of seven professionals from industry and academia. The BWM was utilized to calculate the risk factor weights. The BWM procedure is described in Appendix A. The panel of experts was asked to select the best and worst risks from the major risks. Experts were then asked to prioritize the highest risks over other risks and prioritize other risks over the worst. The expert inputs Best-to-Others and Others-to-worst are shown in Tables 2 and 3, respectively. The final weight for each expert is calculated using the procedures in Appendix A. Besides, the average weight was considered the final weight to calculate the final weight for the risk category. Table 4 shows the final and average weights of the seven experts. The average ξL is 0.09245 (close to zero), demonstrating consistent comparison reliability.

Table 2 Best-to-others
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Table 3 Others-to-worst
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Table 4 Major risk elements weights
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Similarly, the local and global weights of each risk factor are obtained. The global weights for each dimension under which various risk elements are categorized (Table 5). The weights for each of those risk elements are calculated by the multiplication of associated risk dimensions to the local weight of a particular risk element.

Table 5 Final ranking of major risk and risk elements of HSC
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4 Results and discussion

The deeper insights of experts, analysis of results are presented in Table 4. The production-related risk holds the highest weight (0.286074) among the other identified risks. The planning-related risk is ranked second with weight (0.284071), source-related risk (0.167193), market-related risk (0.086332), logistics and outsource-related risk (0.081436), information technology-related risk (0.059722), and sustainability-related risk (0.035169). The results suggested that production, planning, and sourcing-related risks as the most obstructive risks in Halal supply chain management.

Production-related risks: Production is the most critical stage in the supply chain, and results showed production-related risks are the most significant risks among them. The various risk elements in the production stage enhance the risk in HSC, such as quality of raw material, Halal material storage, and failure of equipment/machinery, etc. Such risks must be tackled on a priority basis to succeed. Planning is the initial part of HSCM, ranked second. The planning-related risks also affected the operations of the supply chain, such as sourcing of raw material, production process, risk of policy failure, poor demand forecasting, lack of commitment to managing HSC, and so on. Thus, such risks need to be considered as greater attention in HSCM.

The most critical risk category in HSCM is source-related risks. It is the initial activity of SC and affects the production and logistics operations. The sourcing-related risk which needs greater attention such as unlawful ingredients, non-hygienic raw material, risk of supplier availability of halal material, and so on. These risks can be removed through the development of multiple sourcing strategies.

Marketing-related risks are also a major risk category of HSCM. It directly influences the organization's brand image and financial losses. The risk of dependency of the limited customer’ can be avoided through the development of effective marketing strategies and promoting the characteristics of Halal products. The risk of non-creditable labeling may affect customer trust. It could be reduced by penalizing the organization.

Information technology-related risks are also influenced supply chain activities. The information sharing among the partners of the supply chain may mitigate (information inaccuracy) the trust among partners. So it is significant to adopt effective information technology to eliminate such kind of risk. Mostly, blockchain technology may be adopted in HSCM.

The logistics and outsourcing risks also influenced the supply chain of the organization. Outsourcing of Halal-related activities, delivery lead time, transportation, and warehousing are the significant risks related to logistics and outsourcing. Such risks can be managed and mitigated by proper scheduling of sourcing, production, and storage.

Sustainability is significant for supply chain management. Thus, the risks associated with sustainability are also important in HSCM. Such as production and planning, higher cost for Halal ingredients, these risks can be controlled by effective management.

5 Conclusion

Risk management is an important aspect of supply chain management. The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize the risk factors of HSCM. Therefore, for this purpose, 42 risk factors were finalized using systematic literature and expert concerns. Besides, these risks have been categorized into seven key aspects: planning-related risk, procurement-related risk, production-related risk, logistics, and outsourcing-related risk, market-related risk, information technology, and sustainability-related risk. The fuzzy BWM method is used for more detailed insights to prioritize the final risk factor. After conducting an analysis, this study reveals that the risks associated with production, planning, and procurement are more important than other risks. The global ranking of each risk factor is also obtained based on the weight of their preferences. Finally, based on the analysis, some mitigation strategies are proposed to managers and policy planners.

6 Research implications

This research demonstrates that halal supply chain management differs from traditional supply chain management which required specific parameters to meet supply chain objectives. Furthermore, 42 major risks of HSCM were identified that could be applied to the Halal sector specifically the Halal food supply chain, halal cosmetics, etc. This research can assist the managers to develop mitigation strategies to reduce risks in the halal supply chain. It also contributes to the literature of halal supply chain perspective. The identified risk may help the academician to comprehend risks in relevant sectors such as faith-based supply chain and halal food supply chain.

7 Limitations & future research

Similar to other investigations, this research also has some limitations, there are few publications on HSCM. So, some risks related to HSCM may be overlooked. Further, subjective expert opinions can be reduced by using fuzzy set theory, type 2 fuzzy numbers, a grey number which is the advanced version of fuzzy numbers. Future research will develop other MCDM methods, such as analytical network processes (ANP) and prioritization methods based on similarity to ideal situations (TOPSIS), to identify and prioritize risk factors.