Disaster Relief Supply Chains

While some aspects of commercial logistics and supply chain management are fully applicable for disaster relief and humanitarian supply chains many are not directly transferable. What are the similarities and what are the differences? Can both types of operations learn from each other? In this paper, Supply chain management for Disaster Relief Operations: principles and case studies, three scholars from Indonesia, Nyoman Pujawan, Nani Kurniati and Naning Wessiani propose a principle of supply chain management for Disaster Relief Operations  based on visibility, coordination, professionalism and accountability, and then apply it as a framework to evaluate the handling of logistics operation of two recent events in Indonesia. What they come up with is indeed quite interesting.

Commonalities and differences

This is not the first time humanitarian logistics appear as a topic on husdal.com. And this also not the first time that Nyoman Pujawan, one of the authors, appears on husdal.com. I first came across Nyoman Pujawan in the extensive review of supply chain risk literature he and his two fellow authors did in 2009. And moreover, it is also not the first time that disasters, humanitarian logistics and supply chains in Indonesia appear on this blog, because there many commonalities between ordinary supply chains and disaster supply chains, albeit many differences, too.

Supply and demand in disasters

A disaster relief operation could be viewed as a supply chain operating under an extreme supply chain disruption, say, in the case of Japan after the massive earthquake in March 2011, where much of the infrastructure that supply chains rely on was totally destroyed. A natural disaster is a supply chain risk in itself.



On the other hand, disaster relief operations could also be viewed as a supply chain operating with extreme supply chain flexibility or extreme supply chain agility, where ordinary and mixed demand for goods shifts towards extreme demand for certain types of (disaster relief) goods, or where demand shifts towards extreme demand in certain (disaster) locations.

Principles of SCM for DRO

While there are obvious commonalities there are also obvious differences between supply chain management (SCM) and disaster relief operations (DRO). In this article the authors present four guiding principles that permeate both SCM and DRO, but which work in different ways in either type of operations:

  • Visibility
  • Coordination
  • Accountability
  • Professionalism

How the authors arrived at these I do not know, and the article does not explain why these four principles belong to SCM or where in the literature they appear, or whether this is their on concoction. That said, they do a good job in explaining what these principles mean in running a DRO.

Visibility

Obviously, supply chain visibility helps to improve the efficiency and service level of the supply chain, simply by knowing what goods are demanded and/or produced/sold where. In a DRO this becomes crucial, as shifts in demand are highly unpredictable and the key to success lies in having the right relief at the right place at the right time. Visibility also keeps track of who donated what.

Coordination

A DRO involves many parties, often with conflicting goals or priorities, or parties without a history of prior collaboration. In addition, many NGOs will run their disaster relief operations in parallel, leading to a multiplication of the same efforts, thus wasting resources. Strong oversight and rigid coordination is required, but is at the same time challenged by the multitude of differing demands.

Professionalism

A lack of skilled personnel that are trained in logistics are a major challenge for many DROs. While SCM over the years has developed a set of standards and procedures, DROs have not, perhaps because DRO rely so heavily on volunteers. After all, DROs are mobilized and then de-mobilized, they are not ongoing operations upon which a SCM professional can build a career.

Accountability

Accountability and visibility go hand in hand with professionalism and lack of accountability exposes the DRO to both ethical risk and fraud risk, let alone reputation risk. Unfortunately the authors do not write very much about this or why it is so important, besides highlighting the importance of tracing and keeping track of  the individual donations and resources used within the DRO.

Conclusion

While I do agree that the four principles of visibility, coordination, accountability and professionalism are important ingredients in both SCM and DRO, I would have liked to see how the authors arrived at this point of view. The paper makes convincing arguments for each of these, after they have been introduced, but not before. Moreover,  the latter two are not very much elaborated upon. That said, this is a paper that fits very well within the humanitarian logistics realm. In particular, the application of these principles to two case studies from Indonesia adds valuable insights into how DROs should and should not work.

Reference

Pujawan, I., Kurniati, N., & Wessiani, N. (2009). Supply chain management for Disaster Relief Operations: principles and case studies International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 5 (6). 679-692 DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2009.024797

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