Humanitarian Supply Chains: Characteristics, Challenges and Response Structure

Commercial supply chains are recognized as a source of competitiveness. As such, firms engage in their active management with a view to reduce the gap between demand and supply. For example, they use a range of tools and techniques to estimate or measure demand and make a series of strategic decisions regarding their asset configuration, products and operation design, and supplier network. During disasters, to save human lives, how do humanitarian organize their emergency relief supply chains and what constitutes the main challenge? It is argued that the effectiveness of humanitarian organizations emergency relief operations hinges on their level of preparedness, response of their supply network and their ability to respond to the temporary and structural logistics challenges. To appreciate the peculiarities of humanitarian operations, the characteristics of their supply chains and the composition of the humanitarian supply networks are discussed. The discussion will highlight the importance of logistics in humanitarian supply chain and introduce the structure adopted by humanitarian organizations to mitigation failure modes related to logistics bottlenecks. For more information, please contact Chantal Schoof (cschoof@rsm.nl/ 82032)