23.1 What is Humanitarian Logistics?
During last decades interest in HL has grown tremendously both in practical field and in academic community due to the increase in number of sudden natural and manmade disasters globally. Disasters have dramatically increased in last 100 years. Logistics operation contain 80 per cent of activities in any disaster relief operation that why nowadays it is consider to be one of the important aspect in disaster relief (Trunick, 2005). It can be understood better by following definition
Definition of Humanitarian Logistics
“Planning, implementing and controlling the efficient, cost-effective flow of and storage of goods and materials as well as related information, from point of origin to point of consumption …show more content…
Thanks to their capabilities in enhancing the speed and efficiency of relief efforts, logistics companies are assuming a more prominent role as the partners of humanitarian organizations
3.2 Characteristics of Humanitarian logistics:
There are two main role of supply chain in HL are agility and leanness.
Agility is defined as the ability to respond to sudden changes when an unstable demand is combined with short lead times.
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Leanness usually refers to attain more and better with limited number of resources and when demand is relatively steady and certain.
Briefly, while agility focuses on effectiveness and speed, leanness focuses on efficiency and cost saving (Sheffi 2005, Christopher2005, Childerhouse and Towill 2000, Pettit and Beresford …show more content…
1) The mission statements of profit making organization is to generate more revenues while humanitarian logistics focus on saving life of affected people.
2) HL is a link between disaster preparedness and response between headquarters and the affected area. While commercial logistics control or look after whole the supply chain process from availability of resources, negotiation with suppliers checking the production and deliver the finished good to the customer.
3) In commercial logistics demand is known most of times, so you can produce goods according to that. However in humanitarian sector demand requirement is very complex because you don‟t know what will be happen in future in which area of the world you have to serve with unknown demands, so there will be very shorter lead times because of sudden occurrence of demand.
4) In HO is difficult to check the performance level because affected people somehow are not involved in the evaluation process. Whereas in commercial sector you can check your performance on basis of profit, goods sold, increase or decrease in number of customer from last years‟ (Simpson, 2005, Akhtar et al., 2012, Nikbakhsh & Farahani,
During last decades interest in HL has grown tremendously both in practical field and in academic community due to the increase in number of sudden natural and manmade disasters globally. Disasters have dramatically increased in last 100 years. Logistics operation contain 80 per cent of activities in any disaster relief operation that why nowadays it is consider to be one of the important aspect in disaster relief (Trunick, 2005). It can be understood better by following definition
Definition of Humanitarian Logistics
“Planning, implementing and controlling the efficient, cost-effective flow of and storage of goods and materials as well as related information, from point of origin to point of consumption …show more content…
Thanks to their capabilities in enhancing the speed and efficiency of relief efforts, logistics companies are assuming a more prominent role as the partners of humanitarian organizations
3.2 Characteristics of Humanitarian logistics:
There are two main role of supply chain in HL are agility and leanness.
Agility is defined as the ability to respond to sudden changes when an unstable demand is combined with short lead times.
Page | 16
Leanness usually refers to attain more and better with limited number of resources and when demand is relatively steady and certain.
Briefly, while agility focuses on effectiveness and speed, leanness focuses on efficiency and cost saving (Sheffi 2005, Christopher2005, Childerhouse and Towill 2000, Pettit and Beresford …show more content…
1) The mission statements of profit making organization is to generate more revenues while humanitarian logistics focus on saving life of affected people.
2) HL is a link between disaster preparedness and response between headquarters and the affected area. While commercial logistics control or look after whole the supply chain process from availability of resources, negotiation with suppliers checking the production and deliver the finished good to the customer.
3) In commercial logistics demand is known most of times, so you can produce goods according to that. However in humanitarian sector demand requirement is very complex because you don‟t know what will be happen in future in which area of the world you have to serve with unknown demands, so there will be very shorter lead times because of sudden occurrence of demand.
4) In HO is difficult to check the performance level because affected people somehow are not involved in the evaluation process. Whereas in commercial sector you can check your performance on basis of profit, goods sold, increase or decrease in number of customer from last years‟ (Simpson, 2005, Akhtar et al., 2012, Nikbakhsh & Farahani,