As humanitarian organisations continue to face ever-increasing needs but limited funding, humanitarian logistics must trust in new ways to collaborate and become more efficient.
BONN, 08/11/2023 – Today, the Emergency Supply Pre-positioning Strategy (ESUPS) project released the first research of its kind which aims to change the mindset of humanitarian organisations towards greater collaboration and trust-building by introducing a model that can simulate and demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of keeping pre-positioned stock unbranded.
The findings show that keeping a certain percentage of pre-positioned stock unbranded, thus allowing organisations to loan and borrow items, improves response rate, fill rate and inventory leftover ratio. Thus, increasing the level of needs met after a disaster, without impacting the response time and resulting in lower holding costs for humanitarian organisations.
In 2023, more than 362 million people require humanitarian aid, the highest number ever recorded. Yet only 247 million people have received aid, and funding needs have so far only covered just over 20% humanitarian needs worldwide. Against this backdrop, new ways of working are needed to increase efficiency and end siloed approaches. This means that humanitarian organisations need to collaborate and pool resources wherever possible, especially in logistics. Loan-Borrowing and as a precondition postponement of branding relief items has been a recurring issue in humanitarian logistics, for which ESUPS, in collaboration with Özyeğin University (Türkiye), has conducted research to scientifically support the benefits of postponement and Loan-Borrowing, thereby increasing trust, and encouraging humanitarian organizations to adopt a more collaborative and efficient mindset.
With this research, ESUPS and Özyeğin University (Türkiye) provide a valuable tool to explore the benefits – and avoid the pitfalls – that sharing strategies can bring to humanitarian organizations. Therefore, humanitarian organisations should take advantage of and replicate this model to confirm or adjust their strategy to keep a certain percentage of their stocks unbranded and establish Loan-Borrowing policies. This is an important first step towards maximising the time and cost efficiency of dispatch, to the wider benefit of the humanitarian community as a whole and, more importantly, to the benefit of people affected by hazards and humanitarian crises.
The report, presenting a summary of the research and a series of recommendations deriving from it, is available here: Report: Branding Postponement & Loan-Borrowing
About ESUPS:
ESUPS (Emergency Supply Pre-positioning Strategy) is a humanitarian logistics and preparedness project funded by BHA and hosted by Welthungerhilfe/WHH. ESUPS advocates for increased collaboration in humanitarian logistics, with a focus on promoting a new approach to pre-positioning, prioritising national and collective strategies.