Disaster relief failures emanate due to supply chain glitches. The activities of Association of Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) present an example of humanitarian relief efforts that use supply chain principles. ALAN represents supply chain professionals with the ability to provide adequate resources in response to disasters. One of the most significant contribution to disaster relief that ALAN leaders have made occurred after Hurricane Gustav in Fall 2008. The organization set up a portal that allowed relief agencies to submit needs (e.g. hospital beds, wheelchairs) that could be visible to people in the supply chain. The supply organizations were able to see these needs and respond appropriately. For example, leaders at Invacare Corporation, a global manufacturer and distributor of medical products, saw the needs on the portal and provided their products to the victims immediately. Another example is the effort by Dr. Sameer Prasad in creating and applying a supply chain model to streamline the process of providing food and medication to poverty-stricken children in Andhra Pradesh, India. With the assistance of spreadindia.org and with funding from ISDUSA.org in 2008, Dr. Prasad and team have set up a safe haven for children by combining the supply chain streams into a single point of delivery. 37 boys are in care shelter and the performance of the refined supply chain is measured by means of health-care specific improvement of these children in the shelter. An interesting offshoot of this initiative is that these children also started to perform better on education front. Several children who weren't going to school, now are doing so, and moreover, with the availability of food and health-care, they school grades have also shown improvements.
Source: Ostby, I. 2009. Supply chain for the greater good – Operations management without borders. APICS Magazine, September/October 2009.