Humanitarian Research Group

Article

How the SDGs Can Change Your Organisation, From the Inside Out

Published on INSEAD Knowledge in January 2021, the article portrays how the work of the Technology and Operations faculty relates to the SDGs.

Article

Flattering curves: Leveraging the shapes of a pandemic

Published in June 2020. Written by Luk Van Wassenhove, INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group and Kim Van Oorschot, BI Norwegian Business School.

Article

The Early Bird Catches the Worm: Why Routine Diagnostic Testing is Vital for Pandemic Preparedness

Written by Dr. Rudi Pauwels, Founder & President of Praesens and the INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group

News

Prashant Yadav on Vaccine Distribution for COVID-19

In a recently published article by Harvard Business Review, Affiliate Professor Prashant Yadav elaborates on the challenges of COVID-19 vaccine distribution. The development of possible vaccines for the COVID-19 virus are advancing at a record pace, raising hopes that a vaccine will be available for large-scale distribution in 18 to 24 months. When a vaccine arrives, global distribution must happen on an equitable basis. To achieve this, the authors identified five investment priorities: financing the purchase of vaccines, strengthening and protecting the health care workforce, creating a system for reliably identifying the residents of developing countries, leveraging data to predict behaviour, and establishing reliable supply chains.

Read the full HBR article by Rebecca Weintraub, Prashant Yadav and Seth Berkley here: A COVID-19 Vaccine Will Need Equitable, Global Distribution

Behind the scenes

A series of vignettes on humanitarian operations by the INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group

The INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group actively monitors the build-up, development, and aftermath of humanitarian crises with the objective to help improve preparedness and response. Through the years, this has led to impactful research and many publications, mostly confined to the academic community. Today, we want to share our insights into the world of ‘extreme logistics’ and the broader complexities of humanitarian operations with you and tell you the stories of what happens before and after disasters are on the news.

The goal of the “Behind the Scenes” series is to be informative at an academic level, while being easily accessible to everyone. These short cases are suitable for academic course work related to logistics and supply chain management, but also aimed to create awareness of humanitarian problems, and, above all, to be exciting and interesting to read.

The initial collection of cases shows the diversity that can be expected: we highlight dilemmas in fighting the Ebola crisis, analyze the unique supply chain challenges resulting from the Sulawesi earthquake, and discuss the successful response of UNICEF in the Yemen crisis. Stay tuned, because the INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group will continue to spread awareness through novel cases on a regular basis.

Website: https://www.insead.edu/centres/humanitarian-research-group

Blog

Doing well by doing good research

Increased case load and less funding, complex man-made disasters and pandemics, climate change and population growth - The field of humanitarian operations today requires more innovative approaches than ever before, many of which are made possible by leveraging the latest technologies. These new perspectives make it a fascinating and promising research area.

20 years ago, humanitarian and health supply chains were an underdeveloped subject. Since then, knowledge from commercial supply chains was successfully transferred, but progress should not stop here. New concepts and theories need to be established and tested for widespread applicability and feasibility. Complex disasters require novel and agile responses. Humanitarian organization and commercial firms alike need to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing environment with fast-growing uncertainties, not to mention hard to handle disruptions. Learning now goes both ways: skills and routines developed in humanitarian crises can successfully be transferred to commercial companies.

INSEAD’s Humanitarian Research Group has a long experience of close collaboration with humanitarian and health organizations in disaster response as well as development settings. Learning about this field requires deep contextual knowledge, e.g. around local cultures or security issues. To this end, field projects are vital to define the problem, gather relevant data, validate the right assumptions, develop potential solutions, and close the loop by testing their effectiveness in practice. With this process goes the development of simple, robust decision rules and training of local staff. Underpinning these efforts is our conviction that we can transfer our business know-how to humanitarian and development organizations while extending our knowledge. We constantly push the boundaries of our discipline by studying these extreme situations.

Business schools not only disseminate knowledge, they also create new insights by studying uncharted territory. There is a science of health and humanitarian logistics waiting to be discovered for the benefit of both the humanitarian and business world. Doing good is not the objective of the Humanitarian Research Group. Doing good and practice-based research is. The indirect social impact that follows is a rewarding positive externality that clearly resonates with the mission of INSEAD, The Business School for the World, which is to be a Force for Good.

Ergo, we want to do well by doing good research and as such be the best humanitarian research group.

By Luk Van Wassenhove,

Director, INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group

Blog

What firms can learn from NGOs in Africa

INSEAD’s A Force for Good campaign has been going strong since the launch of the Hoffmann Global Institute for Business and Society last October. With the ultimate goal to “make a meaningful difference in the world”, the campaign strives to “fortify our academic excellence, drive breakthrough innovation and transform society on a global scale”. This is not a new stab at CSR; in fact, the INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group (HRG) has pursued this mission ever since it was created nearly 20 years ago. Working closely with humanitarian organisations like UNICEF, UNHCR, the World Food Programme (WFP) and others, we apply our academic expertise to help improve disaster relief and development programmes and to transfer knowledge between the humanitarian and corporate sectors. Our research papers and case studies detail how businesses can learn from humanitarian organisations operating in volatile, highly dynamic environments and turn this experience into informed teaching at INSEAD. 

After all, there’s no such thing as a risk-free business. As companies find themselves in increasingly volatile and unpredictable situations, not only in Africa but all over the world – Brexit, a possible trade war between the U.S. and China, uncertainty in Europe, the devastating tsunami in Japan, recent events in Brazil and Venezuela – they realise they are vulnerable to all sorts of shocks. With the right context and mindset, firms can channel risk into opportunity. Through a deeper understanding and involvement with the local communities, firms are granted a level of preparedness and protection when something unsettling happens. In our centre of excellence, we specialise in helping organisations that have little in the way of resources yet an enormous number of beneficiaries.

Although the academic grounding of most of the group is supply chain management, this doesn’t translate into solely technological solutions. We understand that problems faced by humanitarian organisations in different countries are all unique. Connecting with people who understand local contexts will lead to the best, and most innovative, solutions.

In light of the HRG’s long experience in Africa, here are five current projects having an impact both in their respective countries and in the classroom.

Uganda: Data science for family planning

For 225 million women worldwide, contraception is out of reach. Their inability to make choices about family planning has immense consequences for health and development. To address the problem of access, Marie Stopes International (MSI) deploys over 500 mobile outreach teams, mostly in Africa. They visit hard-to-reach populations, e.g. in remote villages, several times a year to provide family-planning services. Five hundred teams may sound like a lot, but unmet needs in such communities is still overwhelming. It is therefore crucial to deploy them wisely for maximum impact.

With help from INSEAD PhD students, and working in close collaboration with MSI, the HRG builds upon existing methods from the academic fields of operations and supply chain management to improve the effectiveness of the outreach teams. Through smart use of data science techniques such as machine learning and combinatorial optimisation, we support decision makers on where the teams should be deployed and how frequently they should visit a village.

After a thorough analysis of the MSI Uganda data, we estimate that our interventions enable the outreach teams to serve 20 percent more clients. Given severe budget cuts, this result is very timely.

Senegal and Kenya: Medicine supply chains

Availability of essential medicines such as antimalarial drugs and antibiotics is very low in many African countries. The crude reality is that medicines are often available at a national level but do not reach the right place at the right time. Inadequate supply chain management is often at the core of the problem.

In collaboration with the WFP in Senegal, we help map supply chains for family planning products in nine West African countries. We also assist in identifying gaps in capacity and opportunities to strengthen them. By providing visibility, the project aims to foster coordination between all health supply chain stakeholders in the region.

Supply chain management is also a factor in a separate project with PharmAccess Foundation and the University of Nairobi. In this project, we try to understand the lack of access to essential medicines, using the perspective of health facilities. What factors create this understock? Is it a lack of skills, supplier issues, regulatory problems, budget constraints, unhelpful incentives or inadequate inventory control systems? We conducted interviews in 40 low-income, private health facilities in the slums of Nairobi. We are currently analysing the interview data to design better ways to manage these health facilities and improve access to essential medicines. Because we were on-site and worked with local people, we can base our solutions on a rigorous understanding of the situation. While digging for the root of the problem, we often find that technology is not the answer.

Our data design and analyses inform corporations on the supply chain realities they can expect when doing business and give them a sense of the solutions and systems that really work.

Djibouti: Strategic agility – learning from humanitarian organisations

In Djibouti, we found how creative, local solutions to supply chain issues could save lives. The Saudi-Arabian-led coalition’s bombing abruptly disrupted UNICEF’s vital supply lines into war-torn Yemen. Notwithstanding challenges like safety concerns, depleted fuel resources, utterly damaged infrastructure, failing communications and a limited staff, UNICEF orchestrated a successful response to the blockade. They set up a forwarding hub in Djibouti and used dhow vessels (small traditional ships) to reach strategically located Yemeni ports that were not generally used by international organisations, quickly redesigning their supply chain. The HRG analysed the secrets behind UNICEF’s response and described in the case study, “Humanitarian Agility in Action”, what other organisations can learn from this successful intervention. We found that much depends upon having the right organisational and strategic capabilities in place. As detailed in a previous INSEAD Knowledge article, the key capabilities are strongly related to the concept of strategic agility and its three pillars: strategic sensitivity, collective commitment and resource fluidity. The corporate world, as well as humanitarian organisations, can use these insights in practical ways.

Ghana: Large-scale procurement and supply management capacity building

You have heard about distance learning, MOOCs and other forms of online learning, but you can surely imagine how difficult it is to train a million people at a time. Harnessing a blend of digital and physical methods for capacity building, we are working with partners such as the “Big Learning Centre” to train a very large number of health practitioners.

We collaborate with Empower School of Health, the United Nations Development Programme and the Access and Delivery Partnership (ADP) to build procurement and supply management (PSM) capacity in Ghana. Lack of expertise in this area is seen as a major barrier to scaling access to medicines and introducing new medicines or health products. As PSM capacity building is important throughout Africa, we try to understand what works when reaching large communities of practitioners, using project management and performance scorecard techniques to evaluate efforts rigorously.

UNHCR: Fleet management in humanitarian organisations

Transportation is one of the largest budget items of any humanitarian mission. Despite the immense costs associated with procuring, using, maintaining and disposing of vehicles, large inefficiencies persist. Every dollar saved on vehicles is a dollar that can be spent on funding humanitarian programmes directly. Reducing these inefficiencies can potentially save lives and reduce suffering.

In the coming months, we will perform in-depth analyses of in-country fleet management practices for UNHCR in Chad, Ethiopia and Uganda. Our objectives are to develop a suitable method for right-sizing country fleets, ensure proper vehicle use and decrease asset and resource immobilisation.

Reducing sources of inefficiency has long been at the centre of the HRG’s research projects. We apply insights and methods from operations and supply chain management to help humanitarian organisations. In turn, we have used our research in INSEAD classrooms, through case studies like “Fleet Forum: Rethinking Humanitarian Vehicle Management”.

Cross-learning

Each of these projects exemplifies the value of cross-learning. Business can be a force for good, and analysing humanitarian operations can be a force for good business. Academic knowledge can make a real and concrete impact in the humanitarian relief and development sector.

The corporate sector, in turn, has much to learn from how humanitarian organisations operate in the face of huge uncertainties, incredible complexities, extremely limited resources and a multitude of stakeholders with sometimes misaligned incentives.

News

Prof. Van Wassenhove receives honorary doctor degree and achieves the five-fecta

On 28 June 2018, Professor Luk van Wassenhove, Academic Director of the INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group, received an Honorary Doctor Degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the Polytechnic School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece for his profound and enduring contributions in Management Science and Engineering.

The Department of Mechanical Engineering were unanimous in their decision, and stated that: “Professor Luk Van Wassenhove has repeatedly worked with all Industrial Management Teachers in research programs and has provided post-doctoral research and work at INSEAD with many graduates of our Department. In these ways he has contributed substantially to the international recognition of the Department and to the scientific and research development of academic staff and graduates”.

Following his recognition in June, Professor Van Wassenhove was named Fellow of INFORMS during the INFORMS Annual Meeting in November in Phoenix, USA. Professor Van Wassenhove was elected to the INFORMS Fellow Award because of his pioneering work on closed loop supply chains (sustainability) and humanitarian operations.

INFORMS Fellows are examples of outstanding lifetime achievement in operations research and the management sciences. They have demonstrated exceptional accomplishments and made significant contributions to the advancement of OR/MS over a period of time.

"Luk is one of the top academics in the world in the field of Operations Management. He is one of the most prolific scholars in the field, credited for being a pioneer in sustainable and humanitarian operations. Luk’s research stands at the intersection of high standards of academic rigor and deep practical relevance. The importance of his research has been well recognized… and he will forever be an inspiration to the coming generations of scholars at INSEAD and elsewhere."

Sameer Hasija, INSEAD Area Chair of Technology and Operations Management

The acknowledgement from INFORMS makes Professor Van Wassenhove the first professor to be recognized by five major professional Operations Management and Management Sciences societies. His other major professional society awards include a 2013 Honorary Fellowship from EUROMA, a 2009 MSOM Fellow Award, a 2006 EURO Gold Medal from the European Association of Operational Research Societies and a 2005 Fellow of POMS Award.

"With an extensive and growing body of work and record number of citations, Professor Van Wassenhove is one of the most impactful members of our exemplary INSEAD faculty. Luk is an innovator of sustainability solutions and consistently produces research that is remarkably rigorous and relevant. He collaborates with leading academics and mentors promising scholars. With his research towards a practical path to sustainable social and economic development, Luk has profoundly impacted the field of Operations Management – and helped set the world on course to a brighter future."

Ziv Carmon, INSEAD Dean of Research

Research project

Fleet management in the land of a thousand hills

Over the past four years, the INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group (HRG) has been a major academic partner of UNHCR, specifically on the topic of fleet management. Through rigorous research and evaluation projects, HRG has studied several aspects of UNHCRs Global Fleet Management (GFM) unit and its vehicle leasing program. This year, the scope has been extended to the field.

In September 2018, Two researchers from our group (Olivier Guerinault and Joachim Mikalsen) recently travelled from Paris to Kigali to meet with the fleet management team in Rwanda. UNHCR Rwanda serves as a best case example in the way it manages its fleet, and we were interested in knowing why.. The overall objective of the trip was to observe and document the end-to-end process of fleet management in Rwanda. This includes ordering vehicles, importing vehicles, day-to-day operations in the country, and finally, disposal of vehicles. By visiting the field and having in-depth discussions with all stakeholders, we were able to see and experience best practices and challenges.

On our first day, we visited the UNHCR Branch Office in Kigali, the home of the fleet management team. A five-man team controls a reasonably sized fleet in the landlocked country. The transportation infrastructure in Rwanda is decent. However, driving to remote locations, such as refugee camps, can be strenuous, especially in rainy seasons. In the Branch Office, we got an introduction to all the processes the fleet team has in place for controlling the fleet in Kigali and six UNHCR field offices.

The term “Road trip” would summarize days two and three in Rwanda, as we were almost continuously travelling between various field offices. The second day we set the course north and headed towards Byumba. The Northern Rwandan city has 70 000 residents and hosts a refugee camp with 13 000 inhabitants. In the field office, we met with UNHCR personnel engaged with fleet, UNHCR drivers, and implementing partners. Day three was spent in the southern city of Butare and the UNHCR’s field office located there. After several interviews we headed for the Mugombwa Refugee Camp and witnessed the difficult driving conditions one can face in a country like Rwanda.

The final day was centred around maintenance services. UNHCR is in fact running its own garage in Rwanda. Regular maintenance of the entire fleet is conducted in this facility, which has three full-time mechanics. Vehicle repairs are outsourced to an external garage.  We conducted interviews at both of them.

The field trip was a first step in enhancing our knowledge of fleet management operations on field level in UNHCR. By having in-depth discussions with people from all levels, we got a better understanding of challenges and needs from implementing partners, Branch Office, field offices, and external stakeholders. The final outcome of the project will help identifying best field fleet management practices, which will be disseminated to UNHCR country programs worldwide. By analysing both global and local fleet management practices, HRG hopes to assist UNHCR in better serving its beneficiaries.

Research project 

Humanitarian agility in action

What would you do if your long-standing and well-functioning supply chain stops working from one day to another? Would you be able to quickly reengineer it? The case study “Humanitarian Agility in Action” tells the story of UNICEF, one of the largest humanitarian organisations in the world, how the Saudi-Arabian-led bombing broke their vital supply lines into war-torn Yemen abruptly, and how the organisation managed to swiftly adjust.

In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition initiated an air and naval blockade for the whole of Yemen, and simultaneously commenced airstrikes to hinder rebel groups in an on-going civil war. All of this in a country where 15.9 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance. Notwithstanding these challenges, and others like safety concerns, depleted fuel resources, damaged infrastructure, failing communication, and a limited staff, UNICEF orchestrated a successful response. By setting up a forwarding hub in Djibouti and using dhow vessels (small traditional ships) to reach less utilised and more strategically located Yemeni ports, UNICEF quickly redesigned their supply chain.

Written by Professor Luk Van Wassenhove, Charles Delagarde, and Joachim Mikalsen, the case study analyses the secrets behind UNICEF’s response and highlights what organisations can learn. Much depends on having the right organisational and strategic capabilities in place, the case study reveals. The key capabilities are strongly related to the concept of strategic agility and its three pillars: strategic sensitivity, collective commitment, and resource fluidity. The case study discusses how UNICEF (and other organisations) can develop strategic agility as a much needed organisational capability in a constantly changing and unpredictable environment.

The case covers all aspects of supply chain management, and is suitable for supply chain and strategy classes, as well as classes on organisational capacity building, change management and fast decision making processes. Insights are of practical value in the humanitarian and commercial sector, since both are operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.

Case website: https://cases.insead.edu/humanitarian-agility/

News

HRG contributes to symposium on Supply Chain Design

Supply Chain Design is breaking out of the modeler’s and analyst’s room. Supply chains are interacting in a complex world and therefore new supply chain design options, as well as significant supply chain changes, can only be accepted and effective if they are anchored and supported by all the stakeholders involved. This requires pushing the boundaries of the traditional models on supply chain design.

On October 23rd, on the occasion of the public doctoral defense of Stef Lemmens (who is now a post-doctoral researcher at INSEAD), KU Leuven’s Research Center for Operations Management organized a symposium on supply chain design. At this symposium, several international researchers from MIT Sloan School of Management, INSEAD, Politecnico di Milano and KU Leuven shared their findings on supply chain design for different industrial applications. These applications include vaccine, humanitarian, closed-loop, distributed manufacturing and additive manufacturing supply chains.

Prof. Dr. Luk Van Wassenhove (INSEAD) presented his critical view on closed-loop supply chains and circular economy. He postulated the relevance of closed-loop supply chains in modern times, but emphasized that the effort to make closed-loop supply chain systems work is often underestimated. Although many papers are produced about these subjects, there are still some important obstacles which prevent the development of successful circular economy business models, such as (1) customer preferences related to buy, lease and pay for use decisions, (2) uncertainty related to legislation and (dis)economies of scale and (3) complexity of the tools to evaluate circular economy business models.