Case Study–Based Evaluation of Stochastic Multicommodity Emergency Inventory Management Model

Abstract

reduce the harm and alleviate the suffering that these disasters cause their victims (2). A significant component of emergency disaster logistics is to satisfy the vital needs of the people located in emergency shelters, such as the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, which was used a shelter during Hurricane Katrina. Holguin-Veras et al. stated that the lack of an efficient humanitarian inventory control model caused major negative consequences for the victims after Hurricane Katrina (3). Therefore, disaster planners and engineers should find a way to reduce the uncertainties associated with emergency operations, to calculate the expected costs of delivery and consumption processes throughout these operations, and to manage the availability and distribution of vital resources. With these requirements, stocking of an inventory of vital supplies becomes a must to facilitate the rapid mobilization of available resources during emergency operations. Therefore, a case-based analysis of a humanitarian inventory management model needs to be developed before the occurrence of a catastrophe. Such an analysis can determine the safety stock levels and prevent possible disruptions at minimal cost for different scenarios.This paper demonstrates the importance of an efficient humanitarian inventory management system through the use of realistic case studies built with information available from past disasters. A humanitarian inventory management system should be robust against disruptions to minimize the impacts of disasters on the supply and consumption of vital commodities. The ultimate goal is to use realistic case studies to emphasize this simple yet important requirement. Case-Based emergenCy Inventory managementDisasters are extreme, unexpected events that often occur with little or no warning and that make people acutely aware of their vulnerabilities. Table 1 shows the worldwide distribution of disasters that took place between 1900 and 2011. The data were taken from the Emergency Disaster Database provided by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (4).The difficulty with the handling of emergency operations differs for each type of disaster. Therefore, an efficient inventory management system should be capable of handling different types of disasters with distinct characteristics. To address these different characteristics, a case-based emergency inventory management problem is introduced within a disaster framework. Planners and engineers first seek a number of objectives to obtain an efficient emergency inventory management methodology. These objectives differ from those of Emergency disaster management has emerged as a vital tool for reducing the harm and alleviating the suffering that disasters worldwide cause their victims. A significant task of planners involved in emergency disaster management is the ability to plan for and satisfy the vital needs of the people located in emergency shelters, such as the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, which was used as a shelter during Hurricane Katrina...

An RFID-based inventory management framework for emergency relief operations

“…Ozguven and Ozbay (2009) proposed an efficient multi-commodity solution to enhance and extend the model of Ozbay and Ozguven (2007) using the concept of p-level efficient points (pLEPs). Ozguven and Ozbay (2012) applied their model to realistic case studies to examine the differences in emergency inventory strategies for different types of disasters. A similar approach was proposed for fixed lifetime commodities by Jaller et al (2008) as a cost minimization multi-commodity, multi-supplier, two echelon, multi-period stochastic inventory model for disaster planning.…”

Operations research models and methods for safety stock determination: A review

“…In spite of real-world studies have already proven the benefits, in terms of service level and costs, of implementing safety stock strategies [36] , [37] , focusing on service level alone may increase holding costs excessively, especially when uncertainty about market demand is high. As articulated in Jodlbauer and Reitner [38] , setting more safety stock increases the holding costs regardless the cycle time considered.…”

“…Fill rate Mertins and Lewandrowski [62] Analytic/Inventory theory 1. Inventory costs Ozbay and Ozguven [36] , [37] Optimization/PVB; pLEPs 1. Total costs (inc. storage, surplus, shortage and adjustment costs) Srivastav and Agrawal [47] Optimization/MOGA and MOPSO 1.…”

“…This becomes particularly valuable at a time where natural disasters, catastrophes and pandemic viral infections are continuously rising. At this point, Ozguven and Ozbay [37] is the only surveyed paper that, by taking advantage of real information of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, USA, studies optimal safety stocks of emergency inventories to prevent disruptions. Further research is needed to make a better basis for the assessment of the real potential of safety stocks in this field.…”

“… [112] Tire manufacturing industry (BRISA), Turkey O A/O – – – Implementation of a MILP safety stock model with realistic production process constraints in a large-scale industrial environment Lu et al. [56] Construction industry VD A/O – – 0-7% increase in service level and 20-46% decrease of inventory levels compared to the solution obtained with the day of supply safety stock rule Mertins and Lewandrowski [62] Electronics industry VD A/O – – – Reduction of inventory costs of materials in process by 60% Ozguven and Ozbay [37] Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, USA VD A/O – – Inventory control methodology for determining minimum safety stocks of emergency inventories in humanitarian operations Persona et al. [83] Air conditioning & catering industries, Italy PSCS A/O – …”