Consumed, not just delivered

Consumed, not just delivered Accurate, timely information is perhaps the biggest trial facing humanitarian relief groups.

Kathy Fulton director of operations, ALAN

   Consumed, not just delivered’ is the phrase Christoph Gorder of AmeriCares, the global health and disaster relief organization, uses to describe the ultimate metric for humanitarian relief provided by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
   The American Logistics Aid Network seeks to assist groups like AmeriCares in navigating the logistics challenges of distributing humanitarian aid. Through its relief work in the United States and abroad, ALAN has seen firsthand the heroics involved in running complex humanitarian supply chains. NGOs become the de facto stewards for the investments and caring that follow relief supplies. Ensuring good stewardship requires understanding what is happening with the product at every link of the supply chain.
   Most NGOs evaluate themselves based on the number of people they are able to help ‘ how much of the product or service they deliver is ultimately utilized. This is a different viewpoint than most of the for-profit world, which evaluates sales and profitability as their ultimate metrics. For NGOs, accountability to their donor base requires they measure the impact of donations they receive. Whether cash or in-kind, donors want to know that what they gave was used to help someone in need.
   But NGOs operating in disaster situations face many hurdles in ensuring the products they provide are ‘consumed.’ Underlying issues like sparse information availability and limited inventory management resources lead to problems like overshipments or out-of-stocks, unnecessary or unusable items, jumbled storerooms, and ultimately, continued suffering because appropriate items are not available to those who need them most.
   Accurate, timely information is perhaps the biggest trial any NGO faces. Until a disaster area is fully assessed, NGOs ship commonly needed products based on assumptions about the disaster and the region affected. Sometimes the products ‘pushed’ under these assumptions can lead to unnecessary or un-useful products cluttering supply lines. The number of players involved ‘ government agencies domestic and foreign, NGOs large and small ‘ make coordination and collaboration difficult. Getting all of these groups to share information on what products they have is a logistical nightmare, so duplication of supplies often occurs.
   Efficiently organizing inventory at the final distribution point can also be a stumbling block. With human resources stretched thin and typically handling only the most critical tasks, inventory management can suffer. Photos from Haiti showed pallets of valuable inventory unprotected and unsecured in a yard. Compounding the control dilemma is the difficult task of assessing realistic needed quantities. Requisitions may include ‘just in case’ quantities as responders fear their orders may be cut. Procurement by those unfamiliar with the products may result in delivered quantities exceeding expectations. For example, a recipient places an order for what they expect to be a 50 pack but receives a 1,000 pack. These requests for incorrect or inflated quantities bog supply lines and store rooms. Those directly impacted by the disaster, with the least capacity to manage resources, end up responsible for sorting, distributing or disposing of products. Visibility of the product is lost, and computing the ‘consumed’ metric becomes an impractical if not unattainable task.
   Securing end-to-end visibility for humanitarian supplies requires creative solutions. Use of social networking tools to report disaster impact, resource needs, and product availability is growing, providing critical information flows in relief organizations’ supply chains.
   Also coming into common use are efficient ways of sharing available resources and needs internally and across organizations. Cloud-based disaster management software, like Aidmatrix, Ushahidi and Sahana, offer the capability to consolidate holistic situational information into a single ‘exchange,’ where needs and resources can be matched to provide the most good. These information tools can help provide NGOs a more realistic picture of what they should ship, limiting delivery of unnecessary supplies. This de-clutters supply lanes, allowing a focus on providing useful, usable goods.
   Additional coordination in international relief situations comes in the form of the United Nations functional ‘Cluster’ system (e.g. Logistics Cluster, Shelter Cluster, Health Cluster). These groups meet regularly at a national and local level, and serve to create visibility and encourage collaboration. In the United States, similar discussions happen through state and national Voluntary Organization’s Active in Disaster (VOAD) meetings and at state Emergency Management Offices. ‘Have some/need some’ is the language of the discussion.
   Like for-profit businesses, humanitarian groups must focus on their core competencies. That means relying on trusted partners to provide specialized skills like those represented in the supply chain community. International shipping expertise, material handling equipment skills and logistics management are areas in which these groups often look for assistance.
   The ALAN model presents a unique opportunity for supply chain-focused companies to utilize their skills to support humanitarian work. Through its network of 19 supply chain professional and trade organizations, ALAN shares information on relief organizations seeking logistics related assistance. ALAN was recently requested to tally the value of product and services it has helped deploy. A more meaningful, but more difficult to capture metric may be the value of the networks and experience represented by its industry base.
   However, the metric is only relevant when that experience is put into action. By connecting agencies to businesses interested in supporting them, ALAN helps ensure humanitarian relief supplies are consumed, not just delivered.
   Kathy Fulton is director of operations for ALAN, which engages the supply chain community to support humanitarian relief efforts. ALAN makes supply chain-related donation needs visible to the logistics industry and establishes an efficient process for providing the necessary goods and services through its Web portal www.alanaid.org.