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This Paper has won Third Prize in "Opsyrus 2006", the CoolAvenues.com - OIG (IIM Lucknow) Paper Writing Competition held during Oct-Dec 2006.
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Executive Summary
Relief Supply Chains involve the supply of basic necessities to aid victims at the right place in the quickest possible time. In the context of commercial supply chains, relief chains are uniquely characterized by zero lead times, highly uncertain demand pattern, improper logistics and infrastructure facilities, and presence of alternate supply chains operating in parallel.
Moreover, these are multi-commodity supply chains wherein many different products having different value, lifespan, importance and availability. Relief supply chains typically have many participants in terms of commercial and non-commercial organizations, donors, relief workers, military personnel, and the government and the aid victims.
The unique characteristics, activities and participants of relief supply chains raise many issues which impact the efficiency and performance of a relief supply chain. The key issues faced by any supply chain can be grouped into three categories, namely -
Strategic Issues
Tactical Issues
Operational Issues
Typically, Supply chain activities can be grouped into strategic, tactical, and operational levels of activities. In this context, the key issues in relief supply chains can be discussed vis-à-vis the strategic, tactical or operational nature of the activity. Some of the issues (strategic, tactical and operational) that have been identified vis-à-vis relief supply chains are -
Uncertainty in the number, location and presence of warehouses and distribution centers which pose problems for inventory storage, handling and logistics support.
Lack of information flow upstream the supply chain, which is vital for an efficient supply chain.
Destruction of/lack of basic and supporting infrastructure causing difficulty in setting up/supporting the relief supply chain.
Uncertain demand raises issues such as how much inventory to hold (inventory holding cost), how much to reorder.
Bottlenecks can arise in the supply chain in terms of limited warehouse capacity, insufficient transport services.
Lack of co-ordination in the supply chain and lack of central command which leads to wastage of some resources, scarcity of some other resources, duplication.
Presence of many relief agencies operating at the same time at the disaster location leads to competing and clogging of basic resources.
Different commodities have different lifespan, different production times, but use the same distribution, logistics, warehousing resources.
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* Contributed by: -
G. Vamsee Chandra,
IIM, Lucknow.
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