This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT 1 The Impact of IoT on the Performance of Vaccine Supply Chain Distribution in the COVID-19 Context Shashank Kumar , Rakesh D. Raut , Pragati Priyadarshinee, Sachin Kumar Mangla, Usama Awan , and Balkrishna E. Narkhede Abstract—The Government of India has started the distribution of the Covishield and Covaxin vaccines across all the comprising states. In developing states like Bihar, the vaccine supply chain (VSC) is likely to face many challenges due to poor health in- frastructure, multidimensional poverty, and poor literacy. Supply chain practitioners are experimenting with available technolo- gies to deal with supply, demand, and behavioral challenges. The present research work seeks to inspect the potential impact of Internet of Things (IoT) on the performance of the VSC. This study draws literature on the impact of IoT on product management, demand management, supply management, social behavior, and government rules and regulations to develop and test the conceptual model in Bihar. Consequently, the study administrated a survey and used structural equation modeling to investigate the proposed hypothesis. The analysis illustrates the positive influence of IoT adoption on the performance of the VSC in distributing the COVID vaccine. The finding also shows the positive relationship between product, supply, demand, and social behavior in IoT adoption. Analysis displays that Indian politicians can substantially impact vaccine distribution because they have influence and awareness of their local districts. This research work has a significant theoretical and managerial contribution for government and practitioners, supporting regulatory officials and policymakers in improving vaccine distribution. Index Terms—COVID, Internet of Things (IoT), social behavior, structural equation modeling (SEM), vaccine distribution, vaccine supply chain (VSC). I. INTRODUCTION T he unavailability of an appropriate vaccine for COVID-19 infection has caused more than 2 million deaths worldwide Manuscript received May 3, 2021; revised September 16, 2021, November 19, 2021, December 28, 2021, and January 29, 2022; accepted February 24, 2022. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Commerce under Grant BS123456. Review of this manuscript was arranged by Department Editor N. Islam. (Corresponding author: Rakesh D. Raut.) Shashank Kumar, Rakesh D. Raut, and Balkrishna E. Narkhede are with the Department of Operations and Supply Chain Management, National In- stitute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400087, India (e-mail: shashank.kumar.2017@nitie.ac.in; rraut@nitie.ac.in; benarkhede@nitie.ac.in). Pragati Priyadarshinee is with the Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Tech- nology (CBIT), Gandipet, Hyderabad 500075, India (e-mail: priyadarshinee. pragati@gmail.com). Sachin Kumar Mangla is with the Jindal Global Business School, O P Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana 131029, India (e-mail: smangla@jgu.edu.in, sachinmangl@gmail.com). Usama Awan is with the Industrial Engineering and Management, The Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT, FI-53851 Lappeenranta, Finland (e-mail: usama.awan@lut.fi). Color versions of one or more figures in this article are available at https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2022.3157625. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TEM.2022.3157625 [3]. More than 50 divergent of COVID-19 vaccines are currently in WHO-investigated trials to accelerate the pandemic response. Recently, WHO permitted the “Pfizer” vaccine to use in the case of an emergency and also allowed other countries to regu- late, import, and develop their approval process for COVID-19 vaccine [4]. The Government of the United States has already initiated “Operation Wrap Speed” to facilitate and speedup the distribution of COVID-19 vaccine using pharmaceutical supply chain (SC) [5], is now facing distribution and vaccination issues [6]. During the epidemic, pharmaceutical SC has been playing a critical role in the society by providing critical medical support to public and private hospitals. Pharmaceutical supply chain management (SCM) knowledge and skills are being used to aid humanitarian missions, undertake emergency relief activities, and cope with a variety of other crises. However, as a result of global SC disruptions induced by partial or complete lock- downs around the world [7], pharmaceutical companies and SC are encountering production, distribution, and safety standards concerns [8]. As there are multiple suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors in vaccine supply chain (VSC), one interruption is enough to disrupt the vaccination operations. Developed coun- tries like USA is already facing production, supply, distribution, misinformation, and infrastructure issues [9]. In India, where the government has launched the world’s largest vaccination effort to immunize 300 million people with “Covishield” and “Covaxin” by 2021, distribution issues are anticipated to arise. Securing the VSC and reducing associated risk is crucial for vaccination programs and for improving immunization effec- tiveness. In this regard, technology like the Internet of Things (IoT) can provide numerous options for SC risk management by enhancing transparency and traceability. It also has many advan- tages when it comes to product development and marketability [10]. The adoption of IoT in VSC will improve the real-time information sharing capabilities, visibility, and communication among stakeholders [11]. It aids in the navigation of the intended vaccination, allowing for monitoring any disturbances caused by supply–demand mismatch, hence improving the resilience of SC. Due to the world’s second largest inflected country, the vac- cinations in India are planned at a large scale that involves many complexities, e.g., demand for vaccines, transportation facilities, and cold SC issues. India’s major obstacle in speeding up vaccination is to ensure that vaccines are distributed by all guidelines and without disrupting the cold chain to all the states from various manufacturing centers. The Indian government has developed a smartphone application called CoWIN (COVID © IEEE 2022. This article is free to access and download, along with rights for full text and data mining, re- use and analysis.