- Crown agents is looking for a Supply Chain Management System (SCMS) project manager, an SCMS country manager for Côte d’Ivoire, an SCMS country director for Namibia, a procurement advisor for Morocco, customs specialists for Angola, and various other logistical professionals. An overview can be found here.
- Concern Worldwide is looking for a logistics coordinator for Afghanistan.
- Goal Ireland is looking for an emergency programme regional logistics manager for Ethiopia.
- The IRC is looking for a procurement coordinator and a logistics manager for the DRC, and a logistics manager for Chad
Aid and aid work
One of the hotly discussed topics in logistics management is supply chain visibility. In a nutshell, you have a visible supply chain if your supply chain processes are measured and controlled on a fairly detailed level — often up to the level of the individual item. The big impetus for supply chain visibility has come from the advent of third party logistics or 3PL — the outsourcing of parts of the logistics process to specialised contractors, in an effort to gain economies of scale as well as economies of specialisation[1]. Outsourcing is basically an external version of delegation, and as any management textbook will tell you, there can be no delegation without verification; hence the need of a more visible supply chain. Good examples of extremely visible parts of logistics chains are the track-and-trace systems that are offered by most couriers.
An offshoot of supply chain visibility, supply chain transparence, has also gained a lot of traction over the last couple of years. Unlike supply chain visibility, which concentrates on supplying information to those using the supply chain, supply chain transparency concentrates on the ultimate buyer of the products supplied. A good example here is Icebreaker’s baacode, which gives customers an idea about the origins of their woollen undies and what happened to them during the production process.
I think both visibility and transparence will gain in importance in health and aid. Like I wrote before, any medical supply chain needs at least a modicum of visibility to be able to react effectively and efficiently to e.g. recalls; and transparence will undoubtedly become more important as we move towards more accountability to our customers, i.e. the populations we try to aid, our donors, and the general public.
However, there is more to this: I think we will also move more and more to 3PL (stay tuned to read about the whys and wherefores); and like the corporate sector, we will need more and more visibility in able to do so while still keep control of our supply chains. Whether we like it or not, we will need to invest more in systems[2] that make supply chain visibility possible; and as these systems take time to design and implement, we need to invest now.
We should be able to learn from systems that are being used in the corporate world. However, it will probably not be possible to use solutions from a corporate setting unaltered in (health) aid settings. Issues like insecurity, lack of instant telecommunications, etcetera, will mean that adaptations are necessary. This is why the Fritz Institute’s Helios system is such a great step forward: it offers the base for humanitarian supply chain visibility, packaged in a way that is suitable for many aid organisations. This is not to say it is without its problems; it isn’t, and it some organisations will find it more useful than others (e.g., it is tailored towards humanitarian aid, and might not be particularly suitable for developmental organisations), it is as yet incomplete in some aspects — but it is a step in the right direction.
Time for a mea culpa. Some years ago, I was asked to advise on the choice for logistics management software for a large aid organisation. At that time, I advised against Helios (or the HLS as it was known back then) because I thought that its foreseen development trajectory was unfounded and too optimistic. I think I had good reasons for that recommendation, but I was also very wrong: Helios has been developed into something that is a model for supply chain visibility in aid.
Is your organisation thinking about supply chain visibility? Perhaps you are already implementing solutions? Share your best practices (and your mistakes — we can learn from those as well!) here.
(Images by James Gordon and Leo Reynolds.)
Footnote
[1] This will definitely be the subject of a future posting.
[2] No, systems are not just computer systems. When I write about a system, I refer to a coordinated whole of human resources, material resources, and procedures[3, 4], aiming towards a common goal. Cf. e.g. “the humanitarian system”, “the supply system”, etcetera.
[3] And yes, a computer program is no more than a fancy procedure, a.k.a. an algorithm.
[4] Don’t you hate footnotes in footnotes?
Michael Kleinman, you are dangerous.
Over at his blog at change.org, Michael started a new trend: humanitarian drinking games. After Michael himself put up the first of those, TransitionLand and Harry Rud soon followed. Time for a logistics version, methinks — after all, loggies need to keep up their reputation as the hardest-drinking, loudest-talking hardasses of humanitarian work.
- Every time somebody talks about “the logistics of this-or-that” when they are just thinking of normal organisational tasks, take a drink.
- Every time somebody changes a protocol without thinking of the consequences of the supply line, take a drink.
- Every time your organisation starts a new program without thinking of logistics, empty your bottle.
- Every time somebody complains about not receiving the wine and cheese that they ordered, take another glass from the bottle that you confiscated from their care package.
- Every time somebody asks how many logisticians it takes to screw in a light bulb (none — the bulb is stil in transit, haw, haw, haw), empty your bottle over their head.
Remember: if you see a bunch of drunk aid workers weaving across the streets of Monrovia, Yangon, or Medellin, don’t blame me — blame Michael Kleinman.
{Continue Reading 0 comments }Aid and aid work, The light(er) side
- ACTED is looking for a logistics support intern at their HQ, a logistician/security manager for Afghanistan, and country logistics managers for Chad and Congo (DRC).
- The Population Council is looking for a regional coordinator commodity/logistics for Nigeria (note that this vacancy is not confirmed on the Council’s own web site, and that I am not exactly sure how reliable a site called ‘Confabee’ can be…).
- A similar issue with this vacancy: logistics coordinator for Medair in Kampala (Uganda) — not to be found on Medair’s own website.
- As with this one: Médecins Du Monde is looking for a logistics coordinator for Darfur (Sudan). However, I give ReliefWeb slightly higher points for likely reliability than the previous two.
- Action Against Hunger (AAH or ACF) is looking for a logistics coordinator for Pakistan, and for logistic officers for various locations.
- Tear Fund is looking for an area logistics officer for the North of Afghanistan.
- And one that is a bit out of the ordinary: the rpc Group is looking for an aviation general manager based in Sudan.
Some jottings that have been sitting in my to-do stack for too long.
- Alanna Shaikh discusses the mechanics of getting rid of HIV/AIDS, and rightly flags the impossible logistics of such a plan. Be sure to scroll down to the comments section for a chuckle and an occasional blood pressure spike.
- GlaxoSmithKline offers to make drugs more accessible for the world’s poor. It always surprises me that some think that making drug prices lower will automatically dramatically cut total cost. Just calculate the cost of getting a tablet of paracetamol to an Ethiopian patient, and you will see where the it actually is being incurred. Small hint: it is not the amount received by the manufacturer.
- The European Union allocates an extra EUR 27 million ‘to strengthen global humanitarian preparedness and the response capacity of international organizations’. One of the purposes would be to improve international coordination and integrated logistics. More to come on integration of logistics, courtesy of a very interesting recent doctoral promotion (don’t touch that dial!), but it is already interesting to note how more and more donors see the importance of earmarking funds for logistics.
(Picture: Liquid Links by Desirae. Some rights reserved.)
Continue Reading 4 comments }Aid and aid work, Logistics, Public health
- ACF is looking for logisticians/base managers for various countries.
- The Tear Fund is looking for a logistics manager for North Kivu (DRC)
- The Research Triangle Institute (RTI) is looking for a national logistics officer for Iraq.
- The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) is looking for an ‘economist with logistics skills‘ for Kabalo (DRC). I don’t make this up, you know.
I never thought I would ever feature an article from Marie Claire, but maintaining a blog takes you places. In a recent issue, they interviewed Danielle Aitchison, a pilot for the UN’s Humanitarian Air Services. Anybody who has ever worked in humanitarian hotspots will know how important UNHAS’ services are for logistics operations, and even though I have some reservations about the content and general tone of the interview, it still well worth reading. Enjoy!
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Some of the issues that I think should be in the forefront of aid and health logistics discussion:
- How should we ensure adequate logistics input in the planning phase of aid projects?
- Will medical professionals and health logisticians ever be able to talk each other’s language? Will non-logisticians ever feel that they own the process too?
- Are cold chains unbroken? Do we really vaccinate, or just administer useless stuff? (This is actually the subject of my thesis research project, so you can imagine that it is a question that is close to my heart.)
- What are reasonable goals when it comes to logistics efficiency in aid operations? Is it really possible to determine a minimum level of efficiency? And if not, how can we be accountable? And how about effectiveness? And the balance between the two?
- How much of health budgets in developing countries should be devoted to logistics? In developed countries it is often more than 80% (including procurement cost), but is that reasonable or necessary in a developing country?
- When should the supply chain stop being flexible (supply rubber bands?) and determine operational options instead of vice versa?
- Why does large-scale aid logistics seem to deliver so few economies of scale? How can we improve?
- How can we improve the level of logistics knowledge and skills in health systems in developing and middle-income countries? What are the determining factors for health logistics in these settings?
- Could health logistics be a determining factor in developing new drugs or techniques? E.g. less heat-sensitive vaccines, reagents with longer shelf lives, etcetera.
- Pull or push? And in which settings?
- Has the kit system had its time? Should we move on to less wastage-prone systems?
- How can we improve on training and mentoring of new health and (especially) aid logisticians? Isn’t it about time that we stop to just turn them out to swim or drown?
- Third-party logistics: a viable alternative in which contexts?
- Are logistics consultants actually worth what we pay them?
- Six sigma, lean, kaizen, SPC: what can we learn from them?
- Isn’t it time that we stop setting up parallel logistics systems for aid, instead using the ‘normal’ channels? Or is that just a pipe dream?
- Is it in any way possible to stop creating new patients by the environmental damage due to inefficiency of supply lines in developing countries?
Any other issues? What logistics issues keep you awake at night?
(With thanks to Alanna Shaikh for inspiring the form of this posting.)
{Continue Reading 0 comments }Aid and aid work, Logistics, Public health
- UNICEF is looking for a short-term logistics consultant (Word document).
- Mission East is looking for a logistics coordinator for Afghanistan
And not really a job opportunity, but an opportunity nevertheless: Lund University in Sweden has announced an PhD position in humanitarian logistics. Sere here for the version on their website, but if you don’t read Swedish you might find this version more helpful.
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