Integrated relief pre-positioning and procurement planning in humanitarian supply chains

Abstract

Humanitarian organizations typically pre-position relief items in strategic locations whose optimum levels are affected by the amounts of pre-disaster contractual agreements and post-disaster procurements. To account for these interrelationships, this paper proposes a novel two-stage scenario-based mixed fuzzy-stochastic programming model for integrated relief pre-positioning and procurement planning based on a quantity flexibility (QF) contract under a mixture of uncertain data. An effective multi-step solution method is also devised to solve the problem in real-sized instances. Applicability of the proposed model is examined through a real case study. Finally, a number of sensitivity analyses are conducted to provide helpful managerial insights.