• Regular readers know about my preoccupation with duct tape. I am happy to say that I am not alone.
• Dilbert’s view of pandemic contingency planning. I wish.
• I recently have become a member of the International Association of Public Health Logisticians (IAPHL). Highly recommended for the very interesting discussions going on in their (closed) forums.
• Emerald will start publishing the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management next year. The blurb looks highly promising. The editors have issued a call for papers.
• Analytics Magazine published a short article with ten recommendations to improve humanitarian logistics. Sadly, they are so thin on how to implement their recommendations that they could just as well have given only one: ‘improve humanitarian logistics’.
• A guide to NGOs for the military. I wonder how many NGOs for the military need a guide. (H/T Chris Albon.)
• An interesting application of standard logistics risk management on very large systems – like whole societies. (H/T Chris Watkins a.k.a. @chriswaterguy – there seems to be a Chris-thing going on here).
• FAILfare: learning from failure. A great idea – anybody in to organise something similar for health/aid logistics? (H/T Suzanne Rainey)
• Stop Stockouts seemed a great idea, but is now totally abandoned. Too bad.
• WHO finally published a procurement guideline for antimalarials. Let’s hope they will do something similar for other health commodities.
• After my earlier negativity on gifts in kind, now a story about an organisation that seems to do it right. Any reader who has first-hand experience with this outfit?
• I have been on Twitter for some time now (you can follow @Michael_Keizer for regular updates), but more recently I started a Facebook page. It’s a great place for discussions with like-minded people and allows for a bit more two-way communication than the blog.
• I have also been working on a bibliography on logistics for global health and aid, using a Zotero group. The bibliography is open for everyone, but Zotero users can import and use it directly into their own libraries. I would appreciate any additions: it is a living document and suggestions for additions and improvements are more than welcome.

[Image: Liquid Links by Desirae; some rights reserved.]

Related Posts

1. Humourless Links for June 13, 2010
2. Humourless links for May 8, 2010
3. Humourless links for January 3, 2010

‘Chasing’ Carly writes about how a distribution went rather wrong, under the title Crowd Control. So how should you organise a distribution?

1. Make sure that the recipients know in advance when and how the distribution will be organised. In Carly’s case, probably the right time to do so would have been when the coupons were handed out, the day before.
2. Make sure that the goods are there when promised, and make sure you have enough. Nothing will incite a riot as handily as handing out goodies to the first half of the crowd and then tell the other half they will have to go back home empty-handed.
3. Make sure your distribution area is well prepared. As Carly observes, nobody likes to stand in the sun (or rain, or driving wind) for long periods of time, so make sure there are shelters; use rope and posts to demarcate corridors for lines; prepare signs for the various queues; make sure that you have communication equipment (a.k.a. a megaphone or bullroarer); ensure water, sanitation, and where appropriate, food are available; etcetera, etcetera. If you start thinking about this on the day itself, you are definitely too late.
4. Make sure that your registration system is prepared. I will write more about this at some time in the future (thank you, Rob Stephenson, for giving me some serious food for thought on the subject).
5. Make sure that you have crowd control systems in place. Have ‘crowd controllers’ in situ several hours before the distribution starts. Ensure that they are clearly recognisable. Have authority figures from the community (elders, church leaders, whatever works in the context you are in) assist them by bolstering their clout and by defusing possible conflicts. Make sure that everybody knows what to do when things get really ugly (basically: run).
6. Make sure that you have logistics back-up capacity. Have one or more people with some logistics experience at the ready who are not directly involved in the distribution itself, and who can jump in when logistics (for whatever reason) breaks down. Ensure that they have sufficient extra materials (rope, plastic sheeting, water, duct tape, spare megaphone, etcetera, etcetera) to be effective.

And a bonus step: don’t call in the cavalry unless lives are in danger. In most aid contexts, it is a sure-fire way to lose cooperation.

A little exercise for the reader: why is the title of Carly’s post incorrect? (I suspect it is on purpose – a more descriptive title would probably draw far fewer readers.)

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The ever-interesting Chris Blattman published a list of things to bring for field work. A very useful list, I should add, and some of the suggestions in the comments are very worthwhile too. Just don’t try to bring everything that’s in there.

So what specifics would I add for a logistics deployment?

• A clicker (one of those thumb model counters). Will help you immensely during verification activities.
• Cling wrap. Has more uses than I can easily mention here, but for starters: repairing leaky containers, repairing car windows… actually, combined with some duct tape, it can repair almost anything — even, in an extreme situation, some bodily harm (but get to a doctor ASAP).
• So the next one, obviously, is duct tape. More uses than you or I can even imagine.
• Sticky labels, A6 size (4 on an A4 page), printable. Again, more uses than you would expect.
• Permanent markers. You will always see that you need them when there are none around.
• An el-cheapo digital camera, preferably one that can make rudimentary videos. Worth its weight in gold for training purposes.
• The electronic version of the ordering catalogue of whichever organisation you are working for. Your organisation is too small to have a catalogue?^[1] Get one from a bigger organisation with similar activities (so in the medical area the MSF catalogues, for education UNICEF, for water and sanitation OXFAM, etcetera). This will help you immensely when ordering yourself or when getting people to be more specific on their orders.
• Your organisation’s logistics, admin, and financial procedures in electronic form, including the standard forms used.

So what do you take with you when you go to the field?

Footnote

[1] Actually, your organisation is not too small. If it is big enough to have more than one programme, it is big enough to have a (rudimentary) catalogue.

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1. The logistics of logistics, or: why logistics solutions never work here