A study on the lead-times in the United Nations World Food Programme supply chain : a focus on the country offices

Abstract

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the largest humanitarian agency in the world and the logistical arm of the United Nations, reached more than 113 million people in 80 countries in 2004 and delivered more than 50% of all the food aid in the world. In its endeavor of planning, designing, executing, monitoring and completing each and every one of the projects in which they are involved, all WFP business decisions and logistic steps are tracked down via an information technology tool called WINGS (WFP Information Network and Global System). This database is of extreme importance not only for the actions described above but also because it enables WFP Officers to learn from their past experience and improve their operations and efficiency in the future. This thesis aims to contribute to it. The first half of this study is addressed to briefly describing which business steps are in the WFP commodity pipeline and how the information flows from one another. It then moves into a deep statistical analysis in which lead-times from the moment the donor confirms its contribution to the moment food reaches the port of discharge are calculated.

(cont.) Some very interesting conclusions are derived from the analysis, such as which donors are more efficient in their efforts or which kinds of projects require less time and why. The second half of this thesis focuses on calculating some performance and inventory management measures that may help Country Officers. The aim here is to provide them with a wide study regarding performance of the final delivery to the implementing partners. Thus, lead-times from the moment the food has reached the port of discharge until it is delivered to the ending control point are calculated and are used to compute the measures mentioned above. This study had never been done before due to the existence of many uncertain and unique variables in the last part of the delivery system, e.g. transport infrastructure or security situation. Being aware of the limitations in the extrapolation of the results, however, the study performed here may well represent the starting point for a more customized one.