Logistics service provider selection for disaster preparation: a socio-technical systems perspective

Abstract

Since 1990s, the world has seen a lot of advances in providing humanitarian aid through sophisticated logistics operations. The current consensus seems to be that humanitarian relief organizations (HROs) can improve their relief operations by collaborating with logistics service providers (CLSPs) in the commercial sector. The question remains: how can HROs select the most appropriate CLSP for disaster preparation? Despite its practical significance, no explicit effort has been done to identify the criteria/factors in prioritizing and selecting a CLSP for disaster relief. The present study aims to address this gap by consolidating the list of criteria from a socio-technical systems (STS) perspective. Then, to handle the interdependence among the criteria derived from the STS, we develop a hybrid multi-criteria decision making model for CLSP selection in the disaster preparedness stage. The proposed model is then evaluated by a real-life case study, providing insights into the decision-makers in both HROs and CLSPs.

Considerations for diagnostic COVID-19 tests

“…as disasters have happened previously, the resilience of logistics and supply lines had been studied (primarily for natural disasters, such as floods, earthquakes and wars 88 ). these included exploring the optimal choice of 'logistics service providers' to prepare for disasters 89 , and studying the optimal 'temporary facility location' problem to cope with disasters 90 . However, the scenarios were investigated for a defined scale and geography, not considering a pandemic, which is rarer yet more disruptive.…”

Outsourcing in humanitarian logistics – status quo and future directions

“…The development and analysis of newsvendor models reveal members' incentives to join the UNHRD network (Toyasaki et al, 2017). One paper applies inventory models to identify optimal quantities for relief commodities (Yao et al, 2018) while others deal with multi-criteria decision making in supplier selection (Kim et al, 2019) or models identifying the optimal design of fixed framework agreements (Wang et al, 2019). Multi-commodity vehicle routing models are employed to show the influence of coordination between government agencies and logistics companies (Wisetjindawat et al, 2014).…”

“…However, the literature describes only very limited findings. Some mention a trend for increased use of LSPs in humanitarian operations (Kim et al, 2019). Others restrict this by highlighting that only a limited range of LSPs have the required capabilities to engage in strategic outsourcing collaboration (Cozzolino et al, 2017).…”

Location-Routing Problem for Relief Distribution in the Early Post-Earthquake Stage from the Perspective of Fairness

“…Constraints (17) and (18) guarantee that a vehicle is assigned to a distribution center as long as it is opened, and vehicles are only assigned to open distribution centers. Constraints (19) and (20) guarantee that a helicopter is assigned to a distribution center as long as it is opened, and helicopters are only assigned to open distribution centers. Constraint (21) indicates the time that a vehicle arrives at the demand node.…”

“…Tabu search heuristic was employed to calculate the optimal number of temporary blood centers, and Bayesian belief network was employed to prioritize the factors for locating the temporary blood facilities [19]. Kim et al (2018) focused on the problem of logistics service provider selection for disaster preparation based on a socio-technical systems perspective, and developed a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making model for logistics service provider selection in the disaster preparedness stage [20]. Zhang et al (2018) presented an exploration of the sustainable multi-depot emergency LRP with uncertain information, constructed an uncertain multi-objective LRP model for emergency response by considering vehicle travel time, emergency relief costs and carbon dioxide emissions.…”