Kit management in humanitarian supply chains

Abstract

With the continuous growth in world population and increasing disruptions due to climate change around the world, global humanitarian organizations are hard pressed to improve their capacity to respond to emergencies. Such operations require the ability by humanitarian organizations to be dynamic and react to a wide range of situations on a short term basis and kits help them do so. The aim of this research is to understand how the capabilities of a large humanitarian organization help support kit management. The method used is a multiple case study on kitting activities that are managed by a large United Nations agency. Kits offer the possibility to combine both the knowledge and skills from technical specialists and local country office staff to offer a relevant solution for emergency response. Developing relevant kits for the humanitarian context require strong collaboration between partners in the preparedness phase and thorough follow up in monitoring and evaluation to develop standards and build up relevant knowledge. With proper kit management comes improvement in flexibility, timeliness and quality and these can be shared across supply chains when kits are transferred from one humanitarian organization to another.