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Issues in Supply chain

Q1. How to set up a supply chain, which is for a short duration of time?

The disaster supply-chain can be divided into three distinct chains: -

1) Logistics experts note one chain, fast but low volume, moves commodities like food, medicine and clothing - the commercial world equivalent of a Wal-Mart or Sears.

2) The second chain transports major components like cranes, housing materials that require maintenance and repair over extended periods. Boeing and Caterpillar would be their commercial equivalents.

3) The third is the deployment chain in which we must move large number of people and material in a short period in trying conditions. There is, of course, no commercial equivalent to this chain.

Effective way of starting a short duration supply chain is to define the role and clearly mentioning the flow of material and fund etc. This can be achieved by Incident command system (ICS).

The following are part of the ICS: -

Incident Commander

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* Contributed by: -
Uday Sankar A. & S. Yogendra,
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai.