This Paper has won Second Prize in "Opsyrus 2006", the CoolAvenues.com - OIG (IIM Lucknow) Paper Writing Competition held during Oct-Dec 2006.

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Executive Summary

Purpose

Over the past few years, the natural disasters floods, hurricanes etc have highlighted the low levels of disaster preparedness and inability of the hospitals and relief organizations to respond effectively. The quick response of relief organizations in the early stages of disaster can lower its impacts afterwards,
avoiding severe loss of human lives and physical assets. This necessitates forming Supply Chain Strategy as a major component of Disaster Management Plan (DMP). Only a quick response and operationally effective supply chain can successfully put a Disaster Management Plan in action. The paper proposes a decision process for establishing an effective Supply Chain which will provide an end-to-end solution spanning inventory classification, safety stock level, warehouse location, transportation planning and information management.

Design / Methodology / Approach

A 5-Step Framework has been used to enable the decision process for designing Supply Chain in disaster. The framework covers inventory classification criteria for identifying critical supplies for a disaster under consideration and then deciding the safety stock level for that supply. Safety stock level is based upon the consumption rate and lead time for a particular supply. Set location covering model has been used to find out the minimum no. of warehousing locations required, balancing operational effectiveness and cost efficiency. An insight is also given into transportation planning and IT infrastructure required for information management in managing a disaster.

Findings

It is difficult for a single hospital or relief organization to maintain inventory of all supplies and logistics infrastructure to cater in the times of disaster. Ahead of it, the supply chain has to be setup for very short period of time thus preventing the organizations to invest building infrastructure for the same. Another issue in disaster management is coordination of all the activities taken up by different relief organizations. This requires the need of a centralized management solution, so a combined model of "Collective & Regional Planning And a 5-Step Framework for managing Supply Chain" is proposed that can balance the responsiveness and cost efficiency of supply chain in disaster management.

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* Contributed by: -
Bhupinder Singh & Prasad Deo,
Students of PGP 2,
NITIE, Mumbai.