COURSE DESCRIPTION
Despite having common goals, often the lack of cooperation and coordination between humanitarian organizations results in procurement and allocation inefficiencies. As a result, a systems view of a humanitarian effort is needed to ensure appropriate use of scarce resources to meet the goals at hand. This course will focus on conceptual and modeling skills to understand and effectively manage humanitarian response from a systems perspective. Models will address system characteristics (e.g. demand dependencies) that drive system dynamics and policies to regulate performance. Course topics include methods for improving coordination and collaboration, addressing demand dependencies, and reliably measuring and evaluating system performance.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Tactical and strategic members of non-governmental organizations, private corporations involved in the humanitarian relief efforts, U.S. federal government employees, U.S. state or local government employees, humanitarian foundation members, program managers, directors of field operations, disaster relief managers, director of logistics and inventory, and logistics officers
HOW YOU WILL BENEFIT
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Describe and model the impact of demand dependencies among the many partners within a health or humanitarian response.
- Identify methods for mitigating or reducing inventory variability and costs through information sharing among supply chain partners.
- Identify opportunities for coordination within organizations and collaboration across organizations for increased efficiency and improved outcomes.
- Describe the strategic behavior of decision makers and the impact of the market (or contract) structure on the participant's actions and the overall system dynamics.
- Define evaluation metrics in alignment with the system goals and structure system operations and incentives that address and evaluate these metrics.
- Provide immediate impact to their organization through learnings gained from applied and real-world case studies
- Learn to bring NGOs, businesses, and/or government entities together to enhance collaboration, cooperation, and communication
- Discover current trends and procedures to help their organizations and team members get ahead and stay ahead of the curve
- Build a critical knowledge base to make tactical decisions around inventory, routing, and distribution
- Deliver best-practices to measure and evaluate outcomes of humanitarian relief efforts
- Ultimately transform the humanitarian sector with increased capacity to participate in planning and strategic decision-making for effective supply chain management
WHAT IS COVERED
Pre-Course Activities (5 hrs) - Online via HELIX platform
Classroom Activities (2 days) - Georgia Tech Global Learning Center
NOTE: Pre-course activities will conducted online using the HELIX platform online learning management system. Access instructions will be provided to registrants when details become available.
Pre-Course Activities - Conducted online via HELIX platform
Coordination and Collaboration – 2 hours
Game Theory/Incentives – 1 hour
System Dynamics - 2 hours
Classroom Activities
Day 1
- Coordination and Collaboration
Day 2
- Performance and Measurements
- Game Theory/Incentives
Day 3
- System Dynamics
COURSE MATERIALS
Provided
- Participants receive readings, case studies, spreadsheet files, and lecture slides, and will be given access to the pre-course web-based activities.
Recommended
- Students need a laptop with Microsoft Excel and the ability to connect to a high-speed internet connection (internet access is provided for onsite portions of course).
COURSE PREREQUISITES
For those interested in earning the Health and Humanitarian Supply Chain Management Certificate, this course is the third and final of the three-course certificate program. To earn the certificate, participants must register and complete the following courses within three years:
- Pre-planning Strategy for Health and Humanitarian Organizations
- Tactical Decision Making in Public Health and Humanitarian Response
- Systems Operations in Health and Humanitarian Response