COURSE DESCRIPTION

Often the lack of cooperation and coordination between organizations or stakeholders lead to inefficiencies, despite having common goals. A systems view is needed to ensure appropriate use of scarce resources to meet the multiple, and often conflicting, short- and long-term goals from multiple constituents. This course will focus on conceptual and modeling skills to understand and effectively manage supply chains and operations 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

This course is designed for 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

• 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.

WHAT IS COVERED

• Coordination and collaboration improvement
• Demand dependencies
• Inventory variability and costs mitigation and reduction

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:

1. Pre-planning Strategy for Health and Humanitarian Organizations
2. Tactical Decision Making in Public Health and Humanitarian Response
3. Systems Operations and Strategic Interactions in Health and Humanitarian Supply Chains