by Michael Keizer on February 15, 2009
The Zaragoza Logistics Center (a research institute that is run by the University of Zaragoza and MIT) offers a “Global Health Supply Chain Internship”, combined with a scholarship that would pay for tuition, administration fees, books, and even a modest stipend. In their words:
The Global Health Supply Chain Internship provides the opportunity for an exceptionally qualified candidate to pursue a uniquely designed 2 year engagement with the MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program. This paid internship will enable the student to gain valuable first hand experience working on strategic global health supply chain projects while at the same time pursuing a Master of Logistics and Supply Chain Management. The intern will become a member of the Global Health Research Group (GHRG), will assume significant responsibility, and will work directly with collaborating institutions.
More info here.
[Photo: Basilica del Pilar, sunset by Paulo Brandão. Some rights reserved.]
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by Michael Keizer on February 15, 2009
Over at Market Sceptics, Eric deCarbonnel predicts a food catastrophe for 2009. My knowledge of food production is not good enough to really assess whether or not he is right, but he makes a convincing case. For example, have a look at this map:
You will notice that there is a large overlap between the countries that experience the worst droughts and that produce most of the world’s food: China, Australia, and the USA. Not a very reassuring idea.
So what would this mean for us? Well, you can be pretty sure that organisations that deal with food aid, WFP most of all, will be busy. WFP logistics will most likely be strained to its limit, if not beyond. Logisticians in any organisation that deals with the malnourished (and that would include almost any medical or food aid NGO) will have to deal with an increase in the number of feeding programs that will have to be supported, and should already prepare to be able to do so — e.g. by taking a hard look at their procurement and transport capacity for therapeutic food. And manufacturers of therapeutic food can look forward to yet another big year — if their production and logistics capacity can keep up.
Does your organisation have the logistics capacity to deal with this?
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by Michael Keizer on February 14, 2009
I recently bought thermal underwear from New Zealand outdoor clothing manufacturer Icebreaker. I am not going to bore anybody with an account of how good their stuff is (but yes, it is very good), but tell you a little story about the origins of my undies.
The wool for my leggings came from four of Icebreaker’s 120 sheep stations: Walter Peak Station, Olvig Station, Omarama Station, and Te Akatarawa station, which are all located in the South of New Zealand’s South Island. How do I know? Every Icebreaker garment contains what they call a baacode (no, they will not win the price for the world’s greatest wits). This code links to a database that contains production data for each of the batches of fabric that are used for their products, back to the original station and wool batch data. This is all part of what Icebreaker calls their ‘transparent supply chain‘.
Obviously, in medical logistics, such transparency is as least as important. Everybody who has ever been involved in a product recall will be able to testify to the difficulties that always crop up as a result of a lack of data about exactly which products are where in the supply line. Yet our supply lines are normally quite a lot simpler than Icebreaker’s: for each product, we usually have only a couple of potential suppliers (not more than 100 like Icebreaker), and we usually have only some tens of distribution points, a couple of hundreds at the outside (not thousands); yet we are hardly ever able to easily perform a trace like this one without a lot of hard work (which is too bad), often taking a lot of time to do so (which is a lot worse, knowing that in the mean time people could die from the effects).
Logistics management in medical aid work rarely use relatively simple tools like traces of from cradle to grave. Taking into account what this could mean for our patients, it is high time that we start implementing this as a minimum standard.
Icebreaker shows that this is more than empty wool-gathering.
Update (27 April 2009): I have written an expanded post on visibility and transparency (and some sunshine). Go and read!
Illustration: Wool by Sukanto Debnath. Some rights reserved.
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by Michael Keizer on February 13, 2009
by Michael Keizer on February 11, 2009
Original artwork by Australian Leon Rice-Whetton, who made this drawing to honour the Country Fire Authority's (mostly volunteer) firefighters. Some rights reserved; see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en
I think most aid workers see aid as something that we do for others. However, sometimes things can get very close, even uncomfortably so. Fires are raging across much of Victoria, the Australian state in which I live. Hundreds of people have died, and thousands are homeless. An unprecedented aid campaign is under way, with fire-fighters, both military and civilian, being flown in from all over the country, and resources flowing in from all directions — including international aid organisations like OXFAM and Save The Children.
Compared to aid operation in a country like e.g. Sudan, all this is small stuff; but its impact on a country of only 20 million people that has never experienced anything like it, is staggering. The logistics of it is taking up a large slice of the country’s capacity, especially as this capacity is severely impacted by the fires themselves. Luckily, the aid operations seem to be going relatively smoothly.
I live in a relatively safe part of Melbourne myself, but like most Australians my thoughts are continuously with my friends who are not so lucky — and I am greatful for the aid that they receive.
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by Michael Keizer on February 6, 2009
Piracy has been a major problem for aid logistics around the Horn of Africa for some time now. Probably the most publicised case in recent years is the hijacking of the Faina, which carried a huge arms cache to an as yet unclear destination.
Although I am obviously very happy that the crew can now safely go home, I am also a bit worried what this will mean for future shipments. The message to the pirates seems to be that, how ever high the profile, you can get away with a high-sea hijack and expect to paid handsomely — and that will not do anything to prevent attacks on aid ships at all. To quote Noah Shachtman: “Score one — a big one — for the pirates of Somalia.”
Update (20 April 2009): It looks like my first-ever blog post signaled a big upswing in interest for pirates. For more information see my post on sense and nonsense of the current attention for piracy.
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