A new source for my blog

Recent examples of posts on this blog on humanitarian supply chains are  community resilience in times of disaster, showing how public-private partnerships can improve the recovery after a disaster, or managing supply chains in times of disaster, a review of journal articles related to supply chains and disasters. Starting 2011, I can look forward to the JHLSCM as a steady supplier of material for my blog.

interorganisational.org

I learned about this new journal from a post on interorganisational.org, a blog I visit on a regular basis. It is not surprising to see this sort of journal to spring from Gyöngyi Kovács, the co-owner of interorganisational.org and the head of HUMLOG, a Finland-based international research network on humanitarian logistics. Many posts on this blog were inspired by a short note on interorganisational.org, such as my most popular post, the latest trends in logistics and supply chain management, viewed more than 4000 times since its conception 9 months ago (no pun intended).

JHLSCM Editorial Team

Gyöngyi Kovács is now co-editor of  the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, together with Karens Spens, both from the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. The editorial team of JHLSCM consists of many notable scholars that have had articles reviewed on this blog, e.g. Anthony Beresford, Martin Christopher, Daniel Ekwall, Paul Larson, Richard Oloruntoba, and Stephen Pettit, to mention but a few.

JHLSCM Scope

The scope of the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management appears to be quite broad, as it includes

• Humanitarian logistics
• Emergency logistics
• Disaster relief operations
• Supply chain management in disaster relief
• Development aid logistics and supply chain management
• Assessing and managing supply chain vulnerability
• Managing supply chain disruptions
• Measuring performance in humanitarian supply chains
• Decision-making in humanitarian supply chains
• Knowledge management and transfer in humanitarian supply chains
• Information and communication technology for humanitarian logistics
• Supply chain co-operation, integration and collaboration in the humanitarian setting
• Relationship management in humanitarian supply chains
• Public-private partnerships in humanitarian logistics
• Inter-organisational co-ordination across humanitarian supply chains
• Crisis management
• Civil-military co-operation in disaster relief
• Humanitarian health care supply chains
• Principles and theory of relief supply chain management
• The role of donors and volunteers in humanitarian logistics
• Not-for-profit supply chains.

and which will make for a wide range of different papers, in both quantitative and qualitative research on

Call for papers

Given that this is the very first issue, and the broad scope of the journal, the call for papers is very generic, simply inviting authors to submit a paper. The above list does feature “managing supply chain disruptions, so maybe I should try my luck and see?

Conclusion

From what I can see, it looks like a promising journal to come, publishing state of the art research in the field of humanitarian and development aid logistics and supply chain management, and I look forward to reading the first issue.

Related

• husdal.com: Military and humanitarian supply chains side by side
• husdal.com: Emergency Logistics
  

Fully Flexible Supply chains

Fully flexible supply chains are needed in response to an emergency or humanitarian crisis. In fact, humanitarian supply chains are not fully flexible from the start, they evolve and go through four phases of their life cycle:

• Lean + Collaborative (Prequel)
  • Stockpiling goods
• Agile (Phase 1)
  • Executing quick response
• Fully Flexible (Phase 2)
  • ‘Improvising’ creative solutions on site
• Collaborative + Lean + Agile (Phase 3)
  • Developing systematic/structured activities
  • Returning to ‘normal’

Humanitarian supply chains are ‘extreme’ supply chains with a high level of uncertainty in constantly changing environments. Traditional (slow moving) supply chains may often hinder (rather an facilitate) the response efforts

Humanitarian supply chains

Humanitarian supply chains differ considerably from commercial supply chains, and humanitarian supply chains must deal with perhaps the most challenging requirements of all: They must be able to respond rapidly, serve multiple, destinations simultaneously, coordinate global and local supplies, and more often than not, deal with inefficient means of communication and transportation, or in worst case, an almost total lack of civil means of communication and transportation.

Military supply chains

Military supply chains can be divided into three distinct chains:

One chain, fast but low volume, moves commodities like food, medicine and clothing – the commercial world equivalent of a Wal-Mart or Sears. The second chain transports major components like weapons systems that require maintenance and repair over extended periods. Boeing and Caterpillar would be their commercial equivalents. The third is the deployment chain in which the military must move large number of troops and material in a short period in trying conditions.

The strength of military supply chains lies in their self-supporting autonomy, and the ability to deploy whatever is needed to wherever it is needed, fast and without delay, day and night. These rapid deployment abilities are what humanitarian supply chains sometimes lack, particularly in reaching the most remote affected areas. here, the military can play an important role.

Civil-military collaboration

In disaster response, military supply chains can play a major role side-by-side with humanitarian supply chains. In order to achieve this, roles and responsibilities need to be clearly separated, because the military community has different objectives, schedules and priorities from the humanitarian community. Military operations may enable access for humanitarian operations, but neither party should be part of the other party’s operations. There must be coordination, but not collaboration. During the 2004 Tsunami in Banda Aceh, civil-military cooperation contributed greatly to the success of the rescue efforts. Thailand id not follow in these steps in their post-tsunami planning efforts for emergency logistics.

Humanitarian Logistics Group HUMLOG

When thinking about the ongoing rescue efforts in Padang and in Samoa, I am reminded of HUMLOG, an international research network on humanitarian logistics. The aim of the HUMLOG Group is to research the area of humanitarian logistics in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. The HUMLOG Secretariat is hosted by the HUMLOG Institute, in Helsinki, Finland, and is headed by Gyöngyi Kovács, who also maintains a blog at interorganisational.org.

Resilient organisations

New Zealand, a country that is no stranger to natural disasters, has realized that there is a need for society as a whole to focus on the ability to manage and minimize the impact of disastrous events. There is an intrinsic relationship between organisational resilience and improving the resilience of  communities. That is why they launched a research program titled Resilient Organisations, aimed at assisting New Zealand organisations to recover economic competitiveness after hazard events by improving their resilience.

Author links

• Kate Hughes
• Kim Winter
• Michael Whiting

Links

• hanken.fi: Gyöngyi Kovács
• resorgs.org.nz: Resilient Organisations

Related

• husdal.com: Emergency logistics
• husdal.com: Can Supply chain Management learn from Emergency Management
• husdal.com: Resilience Revisited
• husdal.com: How New Zealand develops Resilient Organisations

Top of the pops

Why are downloads interesting? As more and more journals go online, the number of downloads an article has measures how popular or sought after an article is. Downloads are interesting because they not only reveal what is read but also which topics academics currently work on or what ‘previous’ and ‘published’ research they use in their current work. So what DO academics work on? Mind you, the list is based on the Emerald statistics for IJLM, IJPDLM and SCM:IJ, so it is highly selective and highly biased, and thus not fully representative. Nonetheless, it does suggest that some themes have a higher readership than others:

• Supply chain risk management
  • Christopher & Lee (2004)
    Mitigating supply chain risk through improved confidence
• Supply chain integration and collaboration
  • Pålsson & Johansson’s (2009)
    Supply chain integration obtained through uniquely labelled goods
• Corporate social responsibility, ethics, and green/reverse supply chains
  • Hanafi et al. (2008)
    Reverse logistics strategies for end-of-life products
• Lean and agile supply chains
  • Masson et al. (2007)
    Managing complexity in agile global fashion industry supply chains
• E-commerce
  • Cho et al.  (2008)
    Logistics capability, logistics outsourcing and firm performance in an e-commerce market
• RFID
  • Spekman &Sweeney (2006)
    RFID: from concept to implementation

I am not at all surprised that corporate responsibility and green/reverse logistics rank high on the list, and they are certainly not going to be less popular in the future, as noted by Betty Feng in her post on green versus efficient. Update: To read what the latest trends are in 2011 and which forces that are expected to be a major trend towards 2020, please see my post on Future Value Chains and Strategies for 2020.

Other hotbeds

Several other fields also make an impact, and again, no surprises here:

• Value chain analysis
• Humanitarian logistics
• Demand management
• Logistics outsourcing
• Warehousing and inventory management
• Transportation
• Implementation of SCM

You may also be interested in Hameri and Hintsa (2009) and what they wrote about trends and drivers for international supply chains.

And the trend?

Well, quoting Gyöngi,

Integration, CSR, risk management, even humanitarian logistics were already hot topics the last time we looked at them. Optimisation doesn’t make the list any more – though that can be due to the convenience sample of these very journals. The same goes for customisation and modularisation, and supply chain design. “Global” this and that has been dropped.

So now you know what to research, if you want to be in the hot seat.

And I have a lot of reading to do…

Reference

Pålsson, H., & Johansson, O. (2009). Supply chain integration obtained through uniquely labelled goods: A survey of Swedish manufacturing industries International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 39 (1), 28-46 DOI: 10.1108/09600030910929174

Christopher, M., & Lee, H. (2004). Mitigating supply chain risk through improved confidence International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 34 (5), 388-396 DOI: 10.1108/09600030410545436

Hanafi, J., Kara, S., & Kaebernick, H. (2008). Reverse logistics strategies for end-of-life products The International Journal of Logistics Management, 19 (3), 367-388 DOI: 10.1108/09574090810919206

Masson, R., Iosif, L., MacKerron, G., & Fernie, J. (2007). Managing complexity in agile global fashion industry supply chains The International Journal of Logistics Management, 18 (2), 238-254 DOI: 10.1108/09574090710816959

Cho, J., Ozment, J., & Sink, H. (2008). Logistics capability, logistics outsourcing and firm performance in an e-commerce market International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 38 (5), 336-359 DOI: 10.1108/09600030810882825

Spekman, R., & II, P. (2006). RFID: from concept to implementation International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 36 (10), 736-754 DOI: 10.1108/09600030610714571

Links

• interorganisational.org: Trendspotting
• gscmotion: When Green encounters Efficiency

Related

• husdal.com: Future Value Chains for 2020
• husdal.com: Trends and drivers for cross-border supply chains
• husdal.com: NOFOMA

interorganisational.org

The website itself, interorganisational.org, is also worthwhile spending some time at. It is run by Arni Halldorsson, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Southampton, and Gyöngyi Kovács, an Assistant Professor in Supply Chain Management and Corporate Geography at the HANKEN School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. While Halldorsson’s specializes in managerial problems that relate to inter-organisational relationships, Kovács’s has a penchant for corporate environmental and social responsibility in supply chains, industrial ecology, and humanitarian logistics.

On a final note, I should mention that snce January 2008, Gyöngyi has served as a regional editor of the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management. Halldorsson has also contributed to the book Northern Lights in Logistics & Supply Chain Management that was published earlier this year.

Read more

interorganisational.org – The Wall (a list of conferences and other announcements)