Humanitarian Supply Chain

The main elements of a supply chain include purchasing, operations, distribution, and integration. The supply chain begins with purchasing. Purchasing managers or buyers are typically responsible for determining which products their company will sell, sourcing product suppliers and vendors, and procuring products from vendors at prices and terms that meets profitability goals.

In recent decades, due to the increasing number of disasters that affected all the corners of the world, disaster relief logistics has begun to receive greater enthusiasm and support from both logistics academics and practitioners. Humanitarian logistics encompasses both disaster relief and continuous support for developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to explain the process and highlight the importance of disaster relief logistics and its challenges in providing efficient and effective care, supplies, and shelter to areas devastated by disasters. It is forecasted that over the next 50 years natural and man-made disasters will increase five-fold. This could turn disaster relief logistics into a substantial global industry. In 2004, the

Organizations over the past few decades have come to realize two things, there are a limited number of people in the government that are able to respond to natural disasters or large scale disaster effectively and that the government only has so many available resources to offer during a time of crisis. Another fact is, that private sector companies and non-profit entities, such as the Red Cross, have the ability to be more prepared due to their vast network of stores and distribution centers and their leisure, they indeed do have a unique responsibility

Effective disaster management is highly important when it comes to assisting in rescue and relief to affected. This does not only include post disaster rescue efforts but these disaster management activities should be proactive. They start right from taking preventive measures before the disaster actually occurs and goes on till the effected people are resettled back in their lives. This disaster management pertaining to human life is not only associated with physical well being but also focuses on psychological, emotional, and spiritual rehabilitation.

When implementing project 1, you face technical and market risk. How would you assess the risks embedded in Project 1?

Disaster relief operations are complex systems having more to them than just a response mechanism. They require a significant amount of pre-planning.

A democratic or laissez-faire leadership approach would not work for this company. A consensus-building approach can be disastrous in times of crisis, when urgent events demand quick decisions and quick responses. The Red Cross spends a great deal of time operating in crisis mode implementing an immediate course of action. A decentralized corporate structure would not function well when dealing with a catastrophe. People and workers need to be safe by following a prescribed course of action in any situation in which there is an elevated risk of injury or loss.

Communication is widely regarded as one of the most essential elements in successfully managing an emergency situation. The dissemination of information, which is both timely as well as accurate, to the parties concerned goes a long way to lend a hand in ensuring that the recovery activities in an emergency situation, together with its management takes place effectively. For that reason, five critical assumptions are used to provide the basis of disaster management strategy.

Logistics is one of the main functions within a company, and the supply chain is a complex and sometime fragile global endeavor dependent on a network of independent, yet interconnected, moving parts. It requires professional management. Supply chain professionals order the product, build it, move it, ship it, distribute it, and drive the coordination processes with marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing, finance, and information technology. In short, they make any business effort seem effortless.

Our approach was to facilitate the demand with respect to the market. We penetrated the market by building factory in Fardo and building warehouses to the respective regions, Caleopeia, Sorange, Entworpe, Tyran. Another component that we had to consider was finding the optimal cost to increase market share and increase our profit margin. Discussion on the logistics will be discussed thoroughly, which affected our decision points and our overall outcome. There are a few questions we needed to answer before we built a road map to our strategy i.e. figuring out where to build the factory and warehouse, estimate the demand of the four regions and Fargo region, should we change capacity, adjust ordering point with respect to quantity, and also

Richard Dana Associates (RDA) was brought in by the owners of a family-owned business with complex relationship issues at a time preceding an anticipated leadership transition. Following individual and group coaching sessions, RDA was able to help the leadership separate personal issues, and codify practices through formal policies to allow the leadership group to focus on business issues without personal complications. At the end of RDA's engagement, the client was well-positioned to begin developing a transition plan.

Disasters have become an inevitable part of businesses and organizations as well. They not only have a major effect on business and organizational continuity; they also result to an overhaul in organizational operational mechanisms (Awasthy, 2009). It is for this reason that many organizations and business resort to preparing business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans that will facilitate better disaster management in future. Effective disaster recovery plans are important to every business and organization (Thejendra, 2008).

Disaster Recovery Planning is the critical factor that can prevent headaches or nightmares experienced by an organization in times of disaster. Having a disaster recovery plan marks the difference between organizations that can successfully manage crises with minimal cost, effort and with maximum speed, and those organizations that cannot. By having back-up plans, not only for equipment and network recovery, but also detailed disaster recovery plans that precisely outline what steps each person involved in recovery efforts should undertake, an organization can improve their recovery time and minimize the disrupted time for their normal business functions. Thus it is essential that disaster recovery plans are carefully laid

During a crisis, one of the roles of a leader is to create and sustain the organization 's credibility and trust among crisis stakeholders for example like management, employees, customers, suppliers, partners, communities, investors, media, and government. Depending on the crisis situation, a leader 's goal is to assist the organization in returning to productivity. Overall, it is important to protect and sustain the organization 's reputation, brand and value in the marketplace As a HR department, they have a ways to prevent and overcome the impact of crisis management. So one of the HR strategic roles is to focus on leadership qualities such as strategic thinking, communication, empowerment, trust and integrity, considering a succession planning for crisis management and others. For example like human resource functions that will be applied to the crisis management planning. According to the SHRM 2005 (Strategic human resource management) disaster survey report, 65% of HR professionals believe that their organizations are well or very well prepared to face the crisis or disaster. On the perceptions of employees, only 50% of them think that their organizations are well or very well prepared. 85% of HR professionals indicate their organizations have some form of a formal disaster preparedness plan, and 15% do not. Organization must create a plan to make sure

The effective contingency plan should only include the high-priority items and it should be as simple as possible. The purpose for the contingency plans is to response quickly when there are changes of an organization’s current strategy. For example, the predefined strategy is based on some assumptions about the economy but the outcome is not what the organization assumed, the contingency plan can support the organization to react promptly. The effective contingency planning includes a seven step process. First, Identify both beneficial and unfavorable events that could possibly derail the strategy. This step includes the development of the formal contingency planning policy statement in order to provide it to relevant stakeholders the authority and guideline that required developing the effective contingency plan. Policy will be published when executive confirms it. To gather the high-level business requirements, define scope and allocating project resources. Second, Specify trigger points and calculate about when contingent events are likely to occur. It involves the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify threat scenarios, prioritize key business processes and critical systems for business continuity. Executive approval on those choices of the critical business functions and the priority to recover during the disaster. Third, Assess the