Improving humanitarian aid supply chain efficiency in natural disasters

Humanitarian Supply Chain Management Project Plan

Description

The project at hand has the potential to really make an impact in the world today. It examines how organizations are actually handling management of humanitarian aid in cases of natural disasters in the attempt to increase overall efficiency of supply chain management. This examination is meant to highlight any inefficient areas in order to better situate humanitarian efforts to become more effective measures for delivering the help that is most needed in dire situations.

Business Objectives

The project needs to be incredibly detailed, and thus will have to spend a significant amount of time examining the issues at hand. Thus, the cycle time will be approximately six months for research and project construction, including data collection. Then the project will need another six months for the analysis of the data and the write up of the final document. Interviews and survey analysis will all be conducted in a method which will be cost effective. No outside assistance will be needed that would increase the overall budget of the project. Quality can be assured based on the type of participants involved, including major operators of some of the most reputable international humanitarian aid organizations. Standardization will be achieved through a strong methodology that will use statistical analysis as well as content analysis to evaluate the process and quality of aid that is already being delivered.

Scope of Work

It is the objective of this project to evaluate how humanitarian aid is effective, and to highlight issues that could be improved. This analysis will provide real deliverable recommendations that can help structure a better model for providing such aid when needed. Still, there are a number of risks that could hinder the overall progress of the project that need to be addressed and properly mitigated in order to reduce their overall negative impact on the project as a whole. Overall, there are three potentially risky challenges which threaten the research: slow response time to survey questions, limited availability of appropriate representatives to be included as participants, and finally a potential limitation to international disaster sites that could be included in the underlying analysis. In order to proceed with the project, it is crucial that these issues be addressed and solutions be found in order to mitigate their potentially negative impact on the project as a whole.

Project Scope Management

The project will first evaluate the literature regarding the distribution of humanitarian aid to see if there are already issues highlighted. Then, the project will turn towards collecting and evaluating data from the actual field in order to correlate any potential issues found here with any discovered through the literature review. The project will remain flexible in that when issues are discovered, a second round of data collection could be adopted in order to gather more specific information regarding those particular issues.

Project Quality Management

The project has already been planned out in great detail, which assures quality planning. To further ensure quality assurance, a system of metrics can be used to test the data being collected in the project. These tests are statistical evaluation of both qualitative and quantitative measures, and will evaluate the data as it is being collected in order to determine if more data is needed in more specific genres. Moreover, there will also be methods of quality control. Identified risks will be mitigated, and research on specific participants will help determine if they are the right person to be involved in the collection of data.

Project Communications

The project relies heavily on a solid communication program. First, telephone interviews need to be scheduled and executed with representatives from FEMA, the American Red Cross, and USAID. This will not only provide data for qualitative content analysis, but also may point the project in the right direction of finding better participants for the later survey portion of the data collection. This is the second half of the project communication, where fifty participants will be drafted to respond to short survey questions through email.

Project Risk Management

First, there is a clear risk in the process of implementing data collection through the survey methodology that this research is based on. There may be a slow response to survey questions, which could potentially hinder the progress of the research through the crucial period of data collection. Survey collection may have to be extended for a greater period of time in order to anticipate potential disasters that may stall the collection of data. In this, an extension of survey collection will help keep the project on an appropriate timeline without being dangerously behind schedule. Extending this period of time will have to include working within another time frame, most likely during the research collection process in order to ensure that the project does not go vastly over the time period allocated to its completion.

In a related risk, there is the potential for the research to be hindered by the unavailability of representatives to be interviewed. The participants being interviewed are working within a very hectic environment. When a disaster strikes, their main focus is in getting humanitarian aid to those who are most dire need for assistance. Thus, there going to be issues contacting participants who are working in the field or whose focus is solely on securing funds and aid for those in need across the globe. During periods of peace, it will be much easier to secure participant responses, as representatives will be much more available for the process of this research. Essentially, it will be important to extend the data collection time in order to allow participants do complete surveys, even if they are called out to the field.

Finally, there is the additional issue of having a lack of access to some international disaster sites. Many of the regions hit hard by disasters are in areas that are often hard to enter into and work in. As such, many of the areas that might actually benefit most from the research may not be able to actually give as much as other regions will be. This will be a problem because it will create a situation where the assumptions and conclusions drawn from the research are lopsided, and do not represent the entire scope and environment of humanitarian efforts. Working with international groups with high levels of regional respect can help increase the access this research will have around the globe.