CHSCM 3.0 - Unit 1 - SCM in the Humanitarian World

Rather than start the plan generation from scratch, it may be helpful to return to an earlier planning
process step. For example, if the plan is unworkable because it does not provide adequate control
over information it will not be necessary to consider relocating facilities, we can simply revert to the
design controls and information step.
Once a step has been revisited, it will be necessary to revisit all the
subsequent steps to check that everything is aligned.
Use of this iterative approach should
generate at least one plan option that
is suitable, acceptable, and feasible. In
the unlikely event that it does not, it
may be necessary to revisit the service
requirements in the first step.
Pla
n
Pla
n
An agency needed to send education
kits to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The options identified included sending bulk supply and
assembling kits in various in-country locations, or producing kits at either the supplier or en route in
Dubai, and sending on completed kits in containers. In the event, on reviewing these options it was
decided that the most suitable solution for program staff, based on the available funds and time
constraints would involve packing all the products and packaging into the containers in the order
needed to make the kits. This semi-bulk approach was then dispatched, half to Mombassa in Kenya
for the east of the country, and half to Kinshasa to supply the west of the country, and kits were
assembled directly out of the containers. This solution was the most suitable, given the availability
and quality of labor available.
Pla
n
If plan A doesn’t work, don’t worry – there are 25 more letters in the alphabet, 204 if you
are in Japan!
- Claire Cook
A humanitarian organization is a dynamic system where the activity of each actor– or in this case,
function– affects the others. For example, if cash-in-envelopes is selected as the mechanism, the
agency may have to hire 20 new Finance Assistants to count cash and reconcile the distributions,
but it may no longer need its warehouse for in-kind aid and warehouse staff.
This step was developed by the CTP Core Operations Course, based on WFP’s Supply Chain Options
Analysis, during which the Procurement and Logistics functions come together to determine the
overall implications of each feasible delivery mechanism to Supply Chain. The purpose is to
understand how the codependent pieces of the supply chain come together, so that the combined
state can be used to support value-for-money, risk, and response analyses.