Humanitarian supply chain management: a critical review

In this review, we have analysed and reviewed the major issues affecting the management of the humanitarian supply chain management in the pre-disaster response phase and the post disaster response phase. The various issues in theses phases can be viewed from the commercial supply chain management point of view. A lot of similarities can be drawn from the private sector. Even though there are many factors, which exclusively belong to the humanitarian supply chain, the parallels drawn from the commercial sector can be very much helpful in understanding, planning and designing the humanitarian aid networks. The importance of the pre-disaster preparedness phase and the issues that has to be addressed has been analysed in detail. The preparedness phase issues can be treated as analogous to the strategic issues in the private sector. The post-disaster operational issues were also analysed, which can be treated as analogous to the operational and tactical issues in the private sector. Finally, we have highlighted a few potential areas which require the attention of the research community.