| Recent natural and man-made disasters underscore the need of a better disaster relief supply chain to mitigate the damages and reduce casualties. In this study, we design and develop a simulation model of the disaster relief supply chain using Arena. The disaster relief supply chain we considered consists of four stages: Point of Distribution (POD), State Staging Area (SSA), Federal Operations Staging Area (FOSA), and Logistic Centers. At the PODs, SSA, and FOSA stages, (r, Q) continuous review inventory policy is used to control the inventory. The main performance measures include coverage rate, total inventory costs, inventory level, backorder level, and lost demand. The developed simulation model is evaluated through a case study applied to an imaginary nuclear disaster in South Carolina. The computational results illustrate the impact of increased demand and inventory pre-position on the main performance measures. |
Updated 02/21/2015