Analyzing and Ranking of Critical Success Factors of Humanitarian Supply Chain During COVID-19 Pandemic

Every year, natural disasters and unforeseen events such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, droughts and fires occur indifferent parts of the world or, like COVID-19 pandemic, affects the entire globally. In this regard, the lack of proper preparation and confrontation with these accidents will cause heavy losses and damages to the nations and their assets which is sometimes irreparable. Humanitarian supply chains include all actors who are all on supposed to reduce the pain of the victims of the accident and are cooperating with each other to provide services to the victims of these accidents. The goal of a humanitarian supply chain, unlike a commercial supply chain, is not to make more profit, but saving the lives of mostly innocent people is preventing the crisis from escalating. Also, economic and social factors can disrupt the humanitarian supply chain too. Providing equipment, resources and facilities for relief operations and rescuing as well as meeting the needs of the victims is one of the most important issues in humanitarian action. Choosing right suppliers in the humanitarian supply chain is mainly based on two main criteria of “Technical Production Capability” and also “Response Support Capability” where the success factors in this chain focus on the agent environment, technology and organization. Obstacles to the implementation of the humanitarian supply chain are classified into five groups of “force barrier human”, “structural barriers”, “technological barriers”, cultural barriers” and “financial barriers”. In addition to this topic, other issues such as the destruction of supply chain infrastructure like transportation infrastructure, warehouses storage of equipment and relief needs as a risk can also disrupt the humanitarian supply chain. Understanding such risks enables the humanitarian supply chain to be able to detect and deal with all unexpected events.