Sustainable Humanitarian Logistics Optimization - A Hub Concept for Germany Based on the Shapley Value

 Hella Abidi, Christof Kandel, Matthias Klumpp and Solveig Zinnert

Abstract This research paper aims to demonstrate an innovative cooperation logistics concept for different humanitarian logistics phases, namely preparedness, response and recovery in particular for the response phase. Starting of the present lack of cooperation among actors in humanitarian relief chains worldwide the authors argue to build a cooperation logistics concept for German humanitarian organizations by using the Shapley value and showing the allocation of savings among possible partners of a centralized humanitarian distribution hub. The achieved savings and reduction of the logistics costs should be used for investment in relief goods and therefore in saving more lives as well as serving more beneficiaries in disaster cases. Furthermore, the cooperation between different humanitarian organizations would ensure the transit time of the required delivery time of 24/48 h and significantly would reduce transport and logistics costs because of bundling synergies.

H. Abidi (&) M. Klumpp

FOM Ild, Essen, Germany

e-mail: hella.abidi@fom-ild.de

M. Klumpp

e-mail: Matthias.klumpp@fom-ild.de

H. Abidi

VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

C. Kandel

Airberlin Technik GmbH, Düsseldorf, Germany

e-mail: christof.kandel@gmail.com

S. Zinnert

BP Europa SE, Wittener Straße 45, 44789 Bochum, Germany

e-mail: solveig.zinnert@de.bp.com

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

M. Klumpp et al. (eds.), Humanitarian Logistics and Sustainability,

Lecture Notes in Logistics,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15455-8_8

Introduction

Sustainable supply chain activities vary from organization to organization. Some organizations focus with a greater emphasis on managing green supply chain and other organizations focus on dealing with social issues (Walker and Jones 2012). However customers, regulatory bodies, non-governmental organizations, and even their own employees require that organizations should manage their supply chain with prioritizing environmental and social aspects which are impacted by their operations (Craig et al. 2011). Supply chain manager are capable to address the request for example through optimization and improvement of processes towards supplier selection, vehicle routing, packaging services, carrier selection as well as location decisions (Craig et al. 2011; UN 2006). Further example is cooperation between different stakeholder among a supply chain which increase competition, decrease the bullwhip effect, allocate resources and reduce costs (Becker et al. 2011). However, the current literature emphasizes few research studies on cooperation in humanitarian logistics context (Parmar et al. 2007; Battini 2007; Schulz and Blecken 2010; Maon et al. 2009). 

In the humanitarian supply chain sector practice a current approach can be seen as a horizontal cooperation namely Logistics Emergency Teams (LETs). This cooperation was started in 2008. LETs consist of four companies from the logistics and transport industry: Agility, A.P. Moeller Maersk, UPS and TNT Express. This cooperation has different corporate social responsibility programs and is experienced in humanitarian relief operations. LETs assist the humanitarian logistics sector with emergency response logistics services after an occurrence of a disaster. Nevertheless, this concept demonstrates a logistics network rather than a hub and spoke system (Hamiache 2001). Furthermore research projects on cooperation mechanisms in humanitarian logistics exist such as Emergency Capacity Building (ECB) or humanitarian horizons project. All these are significant works of significant inhibitors of humanitarian relief to increase cooperation, and to improve effectiveness and efficiency among humanitarian logistics response activities.

This research paper shows a distinctive and practical implementation of a cooperation within a fixed logistics network as a hub-network, operated in Germany for the transports towards the existing UN relief depots.

The following objectives have to be pointed out in humanitarian operations relief for reduction of mortality and vulnerability, save lives, increase the number of beneficiaries that will be served, combat diseases and promote gender quality in the phase of response and in the transition from preparedness to response:

• Sustainable humanitarian supply chain,
• Cost efficiency,
• Timeliness of the response,
• Better cooperation between the actors in overall humanitarian sector and mitigation of the heterogeneous interests of organizations, 13 H. Abidi et al.
• Standardization of humanitarian operation procedures and systems,
• Construction of an efficient logistics plans, concept and system for an innovative procurement, transport, distribution and storage of food, water, sanitation, shelter, energy, medicines etc. and capacity building.

The main research objectives are economic aspect that show how to optimize costs and to address environmental as well as social issues based on a concept centralized logistics network. To define the allocation of savings/costs for the humanitarian actors a solution concept for cooperative games theory with transferable utility, namely Shapley value has to be used in this research. The Shapley value “makes it possible to shift the debate from the sharing rule to the properties of that rule. So that, insofar as a solution is the unique sharing rule verifying a given set of desirable properties, the only possible choice appears to be this particular solution” (Hamiache 2001, p. 3). In this research paper a case study is used that is presented in Sect. 8.4.1.

The research paper is structured in four sections. After this determination of the research objective this research paper first differentiates the humanitarian logistics network from the commercial logistics network. Secondly it describes the general network model. Then it illustrates with a real-life example the Shapely value as a part of cooperative system for an innovative humanitarian logistics network concept and it discusses the hub and spoke network structures based on savings allocation and cooperation between the humanitarian logistics actors. Finally it concluded by showing further research outlook for the future.

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