Improving Supply Chain Flows For East Africa

Official reference: FMI056/09

Term:

Description

In most for-profit organizations, a situation where two very distinct metrics are used to evaluate the overall performance of a supply chain is dealt by creating two different supply chains: a cost-efficient one and a responsive one. However, humanitarian organizations are less able to create two different supply chains for their projects. There are several reasons for that. The most important one is the human resources and budgetary limits. Lacking enough personnel and budget limitation, some humanitarian organizations use the same human material for both supply chain streams. That may cause, and it usually does, problems to one or both streams.

In that sense, this proposition’s principal aim is to develop a conceptual scheme that would help the humanitarian organizations to design and manage their supply chains. This would improve the identification and control of different activities that respond to the low-cost requirement as well as to the reactivity requirement. To fulfill this aim, three analysis steps can be suggested:

• Mapping and identifying the perimeter of action of the supply chain(s) now operating in East Africa

• Modeling the internal processes of each principal actor, as well as its coordination process

• Suggesting action lines enabling the coordination improvement and thus, the performance of the response process

Participating Organizations