Humanitarian logistics : performance measurement and the role of shipping

Abstract

The increase in natural disasters and aid expenditures has resulted in more emphasis on humanitarian logistics, with interest in the area of performance management and accountability growing. However, humanitarian logisticians have traditionally not seen the need to measure their performance, thus resulting in them falling behind the commercial sector in performance measurement.

Through a comparison of the humanitarian and commercial supply chain, and literature review of available performance measurement frameworks, the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) Model is chosen and adapted as the performance measuring framework for three major humanitarian logistics processes: procurement, warehousing and transportation. Finally, the reports will show how the SCOR Model can be applied to performance measurement in the three main areas of humanitarian logistics, before ending off with a case study on the WFP/Logistics Cluster operations in the Cyclone Nargis disaster.