Inventory control policies for humanitarian logistics supply chain

The distribution of seed and tools definitively represents one of the most important interventions to guarantee disaster relief in developing countries. Several different approaches have been experimented: direct distribution, organization of seed fairs and, recently, attempts to restart a commercial sector of agriculture goods also have been pursued. Both the first and the last of these approaches imply the purchase and distribution of agriculture items, with the overall goal of providing populations with the right quantity of materials, minimizing the associated costs. Thus, it is important to adopt the proper inventory control policy in order to control the flow of goods between the various echelon in the supply chain . In this paper, for each product category, several multi-echelon polices are presented and tested through simulations. Moreover, a model that minimizes the overall inventory cost, including transportation administration and perishing cost is also presented. Context parameters are derived from a case of a project implemented by F.A.O. in North Uganda.