HUMANITARIAN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: LITERATURE REVIEW AND FUTURE RESEARCH

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1 HUMANITARIAN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: LITERATURE REVIEW AND FUTURE RESEARCH by Watcharavee Chandraprakaikul Department of Logistics Engineering, School of Engineering University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, Bangkok, Thailand ABSTRACT Humanitarian supply chain management has attracted research attention in the recent years. In this paper, an attempt is made to review the status of leading published literature in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management. A literature classification scheme is suggested. The reviewed journals are classified according to research publication, publication year, topics and research methodology. Based on this, some possible research issues are also identified, viz., distribution planning, information and communication system, sourcing and supplier management, supply chain coordination and integration, performance measurement, and transportation choices. This paper contributes to establishing a future research agenda for humanitarian supply chain management. KEYWORDS Humanitarian Supply Chain, Relief Logistics, Literature Review INTRODUCTION In recent years, the area of humanitarian aid supply chain management has become very popular. This is evidenced by number of research papers in journals and conferences. While interest in humanitarian aid supply chain management (SCM) is increasing, there is no systematic review paper which collects the existing issues and analyse current literature for the future research area in the realm of humanitarian aid supply chain management. In order to develop better understanding in this research area, a systematic review of relevant literature is needed. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide an up-to-date review of research in this area. The approach taken to the research has been to first identify and bring a wide body of literature from the humanitarian supply chain area. This has been carried out by a thorough search of databases using keywords associated with humanitarian supply chain and relief logistics. Then a systematic process was used to classify the literature along salient conceptual and research methodological dimensions. The results from this review were then used to generate an analysis that could be used to guide future humanitarian aid SCM research. This paper is structured as follows: In Section 2, the definition and characteristics of humanitarian supply chain are given. In Section 3, the literature review method is presented and Section 4 presents an analysis of the current research topics. In Section 5, a research agenda for future work is outlined and conclusions are drawn. HUMANITARIAN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT This section provides the terminologies used in this research by examining the definition of humanitarian supply chain management and the characteristics of humanitarian supply chain which differs from business supply chain. Definition Humanitarian SCM and humanitarian logistics are used interchangeably in this study as well as in the literature (Ertem et al., 2010). The review starts with an illustration of humanitarian supply chain, definition of humanitarian supply chain management and humanitarian logistics.

2 In general businesses, supply chain links the sources of supply (suppliers) to the owners of demand (end customers). The ultimate goal of any supply chain is to deliver the right supplies in the right quantities to the right locations at the right time. Supply chains comprise all activities and processes associated with the flow and transformation of goods from the raw material stage through the end user (Beamon and Balcik, 2008). Similar to commercial supply chain, supplies flow through the relief chain from the donation to the consumers. There is no single form of humanitarian supply chain, although a typical supply chain could follow the sequence in Figure 1. Government and NGOs are the primary parties involved (Ergun et al., 2009). Governments hold the main power with the control they have over political and economical conditions and directly affect to supply chain processes with their decisions. Donors, public and private organisations are the other significant players in the humanitarian supply chains. Donors have become particularly influential in prompting humanitarian organisation to think in terms of greater donor accountability and transparency of the whole supply chain (Wassenhove, 2006). Two-way arrow in the figure represents two-way communications in information, product and fund flows among the parties in the humanitarian chain. According to McLachlin et al. (2009), humanitarian supply chains tend to be unstable, prone to political and military influence, and inefficient due to lack of joint planning and inter-organisational collaboration. They deal with inadequate logistics infrastructure, along with shifting origins of and/or destinations for relief supplies without warning. Further, donors often request their funds be spent on direct materials and food, and even at a particular disaster location, rather than on crucial but indirect services such as information systems, staff training, and/or disaster preparedness (Oloruntoba and Gray, 2006; Wassenhove, 2006; Kovacs and Spen, 2007). Therefore, humanitarian supply chain management does not only deal with delivering goods, materials or information to the point of consumption for the purpose of alleviating the suffering of vulnerable people, but also need to manage value to donors and other stakeholders. FIGURE 1 A TYPICAL HUMANITARIAN SUPPLY CHAIN The Fritz Institute defines humanitarian logistics as the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, cost-effective flow and storage of goods, and materials, as well as related information, from point of origin to the point of consumption for the purpose of alleviating the suffering of vulnerable people ( The function encompasses a range of activities, including preparedness, planning, procurement, transport, warehousing, tracking and tracing, and custom clearance (Thomas and Kopczak, 2005). Considering at the meaning of humanitarian logistics, it focus mainly on alleviating the affected people while the definition of humanitarian supply chain is broader and cope with more activities to response to the stakeholders in the supply chain. Characteristics Even though the structure of humanitarian chains is similar to most business supply chains, the humanitarian supply chain is often unstable (Oloruntoba and Gray, 2006). As a result, coordination and management of disaster supply chains are increasingly needed and must be put in place in the humanitarian supply chains. Goals, revenue sources, and performance metrics of humanitarian and regular supply chains differ notably. Unlike the humanitarian supply chains, which do not have any profit targets and rely heavily on volunteers and donors, in regular supply chains, stakeholders are the owners of the chain. The source of revenue for humanitarian supply chain is government funding, charitable donations from individuals and corporation, and in-kind donations. The goal of humanitarian supply chain is to be able to respond to multiple interventions, as quickly as possible and within a short time frame (Wassenhove, 2006). In addition, performance measurement in the nonprofit sector include the intangibility of the services offered, immeasurability of the missions, unknowable outcomes, and the variety, interests and standards of stakeholders (Beamon and Balcik, 2008). More comparison is given in Table 1.

3 TABLE 1 COMPARISON OF BUSINESS AND HUMANITARIAN SCM Topic Business SCM Humanitarian SCM Main objective Maximise profit Save lives and help beneficiaries Demand pattern Fairly stable Irregular Supply pattern Mostly predictable Unsolicited donations and in-kind donation Flow type Commercial products Resources like vehicles, shelters, food, drugs Lead time Mostly predetermined Approximately zero lead time Inventory control Safety stocks Challenging inventory control Delivery network structure Location of warehouses, DCs As hoc distribution facilities Technology Highly developed technology Less technology is used. Performance measurement methods Source: Ertem et al. (2010) Based on standard supply chain metric Time to respond the disaster, meeting donor expectation, percentage of demand supplied LITERATURE REVIEW METHOD In this section, the main characteristics and aspects of academic research in the area of humanitarian SCM are assessed. In particular, this analysis attempts to address the following issues: What are the characteristics of the research in the field of humanitarian supply chain in terms of methodology? What are the main topics in the humanitarian supply chain research? Journal articles were sourced from the management and science journal databases (Emerald and Science Direct and Business Source Premier). These databases were used in order to search literature in a variety of journals publishing in this area. Keywords to search relevant papers were humanitarian supply chain, humanitarian logistics, relief chain, relief logistics and humanitarian aid. The review focused on refereed journal papers published within the period The papers were primarily retrieved from logistics, supply chain management, operations management journals, although publications were also found (through database searches) in disaster prevention journals. A total of 33 papers were identified. The sources of these are illustrated in Table 2 and show a distribution across management, operations, and technology journals. As shown, 72 percent of the reviewed papers have been published in just four journals; International Journal of Logistics, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, International Journal of Production Economics and Management Research News. The journal, which has published the most articles, is the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (24%). TABLE 2 DISTRIBUTION OF ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS Journal name Number of papers Percentage International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications 4 12% International Journal of Logistics Management 1 3% International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management 8 24% International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management 2 6% International Journal of Production Economics 5 15% International Journal of Public Sector Management 1 3% International Journal Supply Chain Management 2 6% Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management 1 3% Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems 1 3% Journal of the Operational Research Society 1 3% Management Research News 7 21%

4 FIGURE 2 NUMBER OF ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS BY YEAR Figure 2 presents the distribution of academic publications by year. The results show that research in humanitarian aids in perspective of logistics and supply chain management is relatively new, only starting from Kovacs and Tatham (2009) state that humanitarian logistics has received much media as well as research attention since the Indian Ocean Tsunami in A key reason for this interest stems from the extent of logistics costs in a humanitarian organisation. After that period, it has received much interest in year 2009 in several publication journals. All papers have been classified in terms of their research methodology and focus. For this research, Wacker s (1998) classification scheme was used. Wacker suggests that research methods can be broadly divided into two groups: analytical and empirical. Analytical methods are further categrorised as conceptual, mathematical, and empirical methods include experimental design, statistical sampling or case studies. Results of classifying the articles according to research methods adopted are shown in Table 3. Table 4 shows the top key terms observed in the reviewed articles along with some sample articles. TABLE 3 CLASSIFICATION BY METHODOLOGY Research methodology Appearance frequency Percentage Analytical Conceptual/theoretical 16 48% Mathematical modelling 7 21% Empirical Case study/field study/interview 9 27% Experimental design 1 3% Survey 0 0% TABLE 4 TOP KEY TERMS Key term Number Sample Coordination 3 Tatham and Kovacs (2010), Balcik et al. (2010) Challenges in humanitarian logistics 4 Kovacs and Spens (2009), Chandes and Pache (2010) Customer service 1 Oloruntoba and Gray (2009) Distribution 1 Balcik (2008) Facility location 1 Balcik and Beamon (2008) Humanitarian relief logistics model 9 Pettit and Beresford (2005), Tovia (2007) Maon et al. (2009) Inventory management 5 Beamon and Kotleba (2006), Taskin and Lodree (2009) Performance management 5 Schulz and Heigh (2009), Beamon and Balcik (2008) Promoting humanitarian logistics 2 Whiting and Ostrom (2009), Kumar et al. (2008) Purchasing 2 Trestrail el al. (2009)

5 The popular research methodology is conceptual (Table 3) with many authors presenting basic and fundamental concepts relevant to humanitarian supply chain and logistics management. Case studies are also common though they do tend to focus on single case. On the contrary, survey and experimental design have received less interest. As for topic, there is little research dealing directly with distribution, location, customer service and other supply and logistics management related topics. There are several authors giving interest to present humanitarian logistics model, inventory management and performance management from the existing research. ANALYSIS A total of 33 papers were collected and analysed according to the top key terms in Table 4. The current literature focuses on four topics as follows. Humanitarian Relief Logistics Model This topic is popular among the researchers in this area. Several authors build on the idea of business logistics to improve the performance of disaster logistics. Wassenhove (2006) states strategy to win of humanitarian relief and business for cross learning possibilities. He proposes a model for creating effective disaster management which consists of five key elements in disaster preparedness which are human resources, knowledge management, operations and process management, financial resources and the community to produce effective results. In the same year, Oloruntoba and Gray (2006) investigates the nature of the humanitarian aid supply chain and discuss the extent to which certain business supply chain concepts, particularly supply chain agility. They propose an agile supply chain model for humanitarian aid as many humanitarian supply chains have a short and unstable existence with an inadequate link between emergency aid and longer-term development aid. Later, Kovacs and Spens (2007) create a framework distinguishing between actors, phases, and logistical processes of disaster relief. They drew parallels of humanitarian logistics and business logistics to discover and describe the unique characteristic of humanitarian logistics while recognising the need of humanitarian logistics to learn from business logistics. Perry (2007) presents a conceptual framework of natural disaster response requirements to natural disaster planning. This model shows that natural disaster response activity needs to be viewed holistically in the context of a disaster management planning continuum that ideally starts well before the response action is required and of which locally-led inclusiveness is a crucial component. Jahre and Jensen (2009) develop a framework for the study of humanitarian logistics. They discuss three dimensions identified in logistics and organisation theories and how they relate to three different cases of humanitarian logistics operation. Richey (2009) develops a framework for disaster recovery. His work suggest that much of the work in supply chain disaster and crisis preparedness and recovery can be theoretically supported in combination of four mature theoretical perspectives: the RBV of the firm, communication theory, competing values theory and relationship management theory. Inventory Management Irregularity in terms of size, timings, and locations is a characteristic feature of demand patterns for relief items. This irregularity presents unique challenges to relief fulfillment system. As the number, magnitude, and complexity of global emergencies continue to increase, inventory management methods must adapt to meet these challenges. There are researchers working in these challenges for humanitarian supply chain. Beamon and Kotleba (2006) develop and test three different inventory management strategies as applied to the complex emergency in south Sudan. This research indentifies critical system factors that contributes most significantly to inventory system performance, and identifies strengths and weaknesses of each inventory management strategy. Whybark (2007) concerns with the inventories that are held for disaster relief and the need for research into their management. He describes characteristics of disaster relief inventories from acquisition through storage and distribution and points out some of the developments in related fields that affect the management of these inventories. Tysseland (2009) determines how a small country s military force and a small country s non-government organisation plan for and set up equipment maintenance, spare parts inventories in connection with man-made humanitarian disasters. Tysseland studies to determine how the physical context, organisational structure and governance affect the planning and set-up. From his study, he concludes that the organisational structure and governance of the organisation contributing to the humanitarian operation are more important than physical context of the operation itself. When it comes to inventory control issues, the maturity level is different for the two cases in question.

6 Performance Management The objective of the relief chain is different from commercial supply chain. The goal of the relief chain is to provide humanitarian assistance in the forms of food, water, medicine, shelter, and supplies to areas affected by largescale emergencies. As a result, performance measurement is critical to non-governmental organisations accountability. Effective performance measurement systems would assist relief chain practitioners in their decisions, help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of relief operations, and demonstrate the performance of the relief chain. Currently, there are researchers working on performance management to propose performance measurement system in the relief sector. Beamon and Balcik (2008) develop performance measurement for the humanitarian relief chain by comparing performance measurement in the humanitarian relief chain with performance measurement in the commercial supply chain. They also present a framework that can be used as a basis for a performance measurement in the relief sector. The performance measurements which they propose include resource performance metrics (inventory holding costs, cost of supplies, distribution costs), output performance metrics (response time, number of items supplied and supply availability), and flexibility performance metrics (ability to respond to different magnitudes of disasters, time to respond to disasters, ability to provide different types of items. Schulz and Heigh (2009) present and test the Development Indicator Tool a tool developed by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to guide and monitor the continuous performance of their logistics units on a daily basis. They conclude that the process of designing and implementing tools for a performance a performance measurement and management system can and should be kept simple. Important for the success of the process is the integration of key stakeholders throughout the entire process as well as the simplicity and userfriendliness. Pettit and Beresford (2009) give a conceptual discussion of critical success factors as applied to the humanitarian aid supply chain. They propose ten critical success factors as follows: strategic planning, resource management, transport planning, capacity planning, information management, technology utilisation, human resource management, continuous improvement, supplier relations and supply chain strategy. Challenges in Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management As the research in humanitarian supply chain is still infant, many researchers have paid attention on the characteristics and challenges in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management. Kovacs and Spens (2009) identify the challenges of humanitarian logisticians with respect to different types of disasters, phases of disaster relief and the type of humanitarian organisation. Their work is based on a country as a case. In their conclusion, challenges of humanitarian logisticians depend not only on the disaster at hand, but also on the local presence of their organisation. The most emphasised challenge is the coordination of logistical activities. Challenges can be managed better if attributing them to different stakeholder environments. Carroll and Neu (2009) examine the humanitarian logistics and supply chain operations literature, propose an alternative theoretical grounding arising from that examination, and stimulate further debate and analysis around themes introduced in the strategic evaluation of military, non-military and composite emergency relief logistics, the comparison of humanitarian and commercial supply chains, and the coordination of humanitarian operations. FUTURE AREAS FOR RESEARCH Generally the research in humanitarian aid is published in disaster prevention or disaster management journal. Only in these years starting from 2005, humanitarian and logistics aids have been the topics of interest for researchers in logistics and supply chain paradigm. As evident from the literature, the academic literature in this field is relatively new and still scant. There is only a limited body of research on the topic. This indicates a need for more academic research in the field. Herein, a few issues within humanitarian SCM are identified which may require further research exploration. Distribution Planning In humanitarian supply chain the flow of goods from donators to affected people often passes through several stages or echelons. In such a humanitarian supply chain each stage may comprise many facilities. The purpose of a humanitarian relief chain is to rapidly provide the appropriate emergency supplies to people affected by natural and manmade disasters so as to minimise human suffering and death. The design or redesign of distribution networks entails taking decisions on a range of issues, including the location and flexibility of distribution centres, the capacities required to fulfil the affected people needs, and the control system to manage all activities. The distribution system used in humanitarian relief operations may depend on each situation s characteristics. The distribution of emergency supplies for a typical disaster relief operation involves international actors, governmental bodies, donators or non-governmental

7 offices. The interactions among these elements are complex and still limited. These could be explored more in for future research. Information and Communication System Supply chain disaster and crisis situations demand effective communication. Intranet and extranets, electronic data interchange, video conferencing, global positioning system, and even private radio all provide assistance while likely creating a network of immense confusion. IT has long been recognised as being important for the support of humanitarian efforts. Long and Wood (2005) suggest that management of information during a crisis is the single greatest determinant of success. IT assists in integrating activity and providing information to allow the supply chain to operate more effectively. Specific decision support systems and communications and information systems are vital in controlling relief operations (Pettit and Beresford, 2009). Such systems can assist in crisis, disaster and emergency planning, response and management. However, research of information system and communication system for relief chain is still limited. The challenge is to explore more on this area for humanitarian aid in order to drive the effectiveness of the response for disaster management. Sourcing and Supplier Management Allocating the available resources at the right time and in the right quantity is an inherent part of the humanitarian supply chain management. Procurement activity in humanitarian supply chain is very important because of the cash donations and the fact that on hand inventories are usually not sufficient at the onset of a disaster. As a result, the opportunities in this research area include determining the number of suppliers to deal with, managing changing buyersupplier relationship, sourcing strategies, and outsourcing decisions for humanitarian supply chains. Supply Chain Coordination and Integration Coordination describes the relationships and interactions among different actors operating within the relief environment. Humanitarian relief environments engage international relief organisations, host governments, the military, local and regional relief organisations, and private sector companies, each of which may have different interests, mandates, capacity and logistics expertise. Typically, no single actor has sufficient resources to respond effectively to a major disaster (Balcik et al., 2009). Many factors contribute to coordination difficulties in disaster relief, such as the large number and variety of actors involved in disaster relief, and the lack of sufficient resource. The current literature addresses the complexities and challenges associated with coordinating humanitarian assistance. There are also nonacademic resources, such as practitioner reports, handbooks, training documents, and agency website that describe current practices and emerging initiatives in relief chain coordination. However, the literature lacks studies that broadly and systematically address relief chain coordination. This could be the future area for research. Performance Measurement There is a clear requirement for more research on the capabilities of humanitarian supply chains and the measurement of their effectiveness, although some exploratory research has been taken. Measurement system enables the organisation to ensure it is tracking along an appropriate path as it moves from its current state to a future state. Thus, sophisticated measures of effectiveness for humanitarian logistics performance do not yet exist. The most recent research considering this issue derived the requirements for performance measurement from a critical literature review and then tested them within a humanitarian aid organisation. Therefore sophisticated performance measurement could be an issue for future research. Transportation, Model Choice, Routing The provision of transport is very different in disaster situation compared to the circumstances generally faced by commercial chains. While the latter will have stable fleets of vehicles and primarily good infrastructure over which to operate, in disaster situation there is usually destroyed infrastructure and the fleet will have to be organised at the disaster location from available resource (Kovacs and Spens, 2007). Transport is critical in disaster relief and an important aspect of humanitarian logistics is the requirement to address mode, utilisation of capacity, scheduling, and maintenance in such circumstances (Pettit and Beresford, 2009). The full range of activities includes consolidation, contract services, payment, local tendering, outsourcing of transport, strategic alliances, and cost minimisation. Even though, the importance of transportation is eminent, research in this area for humanitarian supply chain is very limited. This topic would be a research issue of interest.

8 CONCLUSION In this paper, an attempt has been made to review the literature on humanitarian SCM. In presenting this work the author has first described the definition and characteristics of humanitarian supply chain management. Next, the classification scheme was set out to identify the trends in existing literature and then further analysis was carried out to establish areas for future research. In this research, a literature classification scheme has been presented according to the distribution of journal publications, publication years, research methodology and key terms. It seems that further research is needed to develop knowledge in distribution planning, information and communication system, sourcing and supplier management, supply chain coordination and integration, performance measurement, and transportation choices. There is other literature available in the realm of humanitarian supply chain management via journals, reports, magazines, and conference papers that has not been included here. However, the main papers on humanitarian supply chain management have been covered. REFERENCES Balcik, B., Beamon, B. M., & Smilowitz, K. (2008), "Last Mile Distribution in Humanitarian Relief", Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, vol. 12, no. 2, pp Balcik, B. & Beamon, B. M. (2008), "Facility location in humanitarian relief", International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications, vol. 11, no. 2, pp Balcik, B., Beamon, B. M., Krejci, C. C., Muramatsu, K. M., & Ramirez, M. (2010), "Coordination in humanitarian relief chains: Practices, challenges and opportunities", International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 126, pp Beamon, B. M. & Kotleba, S. A. (2006), "Inventory management support systems for emergency humanitarian relief operation in South Sudan", International Journal of Logistics Management, vol. 17, no. 2, pp Beamon, B. M. & Balcik, B. (2008), "Performance measurement in humanitarian relief chains", International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 21, no. 1, pp Chandes, J. & Pache, G. (2009), "Investigating humanitarian logistics issues: from operations management to strategic action", Journal of Manufacturing Technology, vol. 21, no. 3, pp Ertem, M. A., Buyurgan, N., & Rossetti, M. D. (2010), "Multiple-buyer procurement auctions framework for humanitarian supply chain management", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, vol. 40, no. 3, pp Jahre, M., Jensen, L. M., & Listou, T. (2009), "Theory development in humanitarian logistics: a framework and three cases", Management Research News, vol. 32, no. 11, pp Kovacs, G. & Spens, K. M. (2007), "Humanitarian logistics in disaster relief operations", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, vol. 37, no. 2, pp Kovacs, G. & Tatham, P. (2008), "Humanitarian logistics performance in the light of gender", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol. 58, no. 2, pp Kovacs, G. & Spens, K. M. (2009), "Identifying challenges in humanitarian logistics", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, vol. 39, no. 6, pp Kumar, S., Olsen, K. N., & Peterson, L. (2010), "Educating the supply chain logistics for humanitarian efforts in Africa: a case study ", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol. 58, no. 5, pp Long, D. C. & Wood, D. F. (1995), "The logistics of famine relief", Journal of Business Logistics, vol. 16, no. 1, pp

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