A Procurement-distribution Coordination Model in Humanitarian Supply Chain Using the Information-sharing Mechanism

The coordination problem of relief items’ distribution operations is essential in humanitarian relief chains. If the coordination is proper, it will improve the response phase to the crisis. In order to improve the coordination in humanitarian relief chains, distribution and warehousing operations of relief items were outsourced to the third-party logistics. In this paper, the procurement-distribution coordination problem in a humanitarian relief chain was studied by the information-sharing mechanism. For this purpose, three decision-making modes, including decentralized, centralized, and coordinated, were formulated to minimize the total cost of the relief chain in the form of mathematical modeling under uncertainty. In a decentralized model, humanitarian relief chains are independent of one another and pursue their own goals. In a centralized model, a central agent manages all activities, and in a coordinated model, independent members are communicated using the information-sharing mechanism. To illustrate the validity of the proposed model, the problem was implemented in the form of a numerical example. The results showed that the chain cost is high in the decentralized mode, total chain costs were reduced in the coordinated mode, and relief items were sent to affected areas without any shortage.