LEAN AND AGILE PARADIGMS IN HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATIONS? LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Background: Humanitarian organizations (HOs) have funding constraints, and pressure from donors and other stakeholders, on matters of accountability, transparency and efficient utilization of resources. Humanitarian organizations need to learn from the business sector and adopt strategies to address and resolve issues of inefficiency in resource consumption. In the HO sector, logistics and supply chain management is a critical area which consumes more than 80% of total relief budgets and therefore needs to be handled both effectively and efficiently. An integrated Lean and Agile management model, which has been successfully implemented in the business sector to achieve effective and efficient utilization of resources, is one strategy proposed for implementation by humanitarian organizations. To that end, this study carries out the important initial work of defining the boundaries between Lean and Agile operations in Humanitarian Organization Supply Chains in order to build a model that increases both effectiveness and efficiency.

Methods: The Lean & Agile Decoupling Point (LADP) model has been developed after researching the scope and thematic areas of 88 international humanitarian organizations. Seven humanitarian logistics and supply chain management (HL-SCM) professionals were interviewed at length to accurately identify key processes and establish optimal decoupling points in accordance with the priority and scope of each thematic area.

Results: Of the 88 HOs researched, 79 were doing both developmental and emergency work, so the LADP model is designed for such dual-purpose organizations. The LADP model is built on a flowchart for handling key processes, divided between developmental and emergency operations. Optimal decoupling points are identified starting from an organization’s broad scope and extending to the details of HL-SCM. The model accurately reflects the experience and recommendations of the seven HL-SCM professionals consulted and is applicable to a wide variety of HOs.

Conclusions: The LADP model provides the critical groundwork that can renew and strengthen HO operations, leading to reliability in which donors, beneficiaries and other stakeholders will have confidence. This study is another step forward toward sustainable resource consumption that will save lives and serve disaster-affected people more effectively and efficiently.