Supply chain for Good: Enhancing governmental rapid response logistics with industry spare capacity

在COVID - 19大流行等危机时期，政府在满足个人防护装备（PPE）和检测试剂盒等关键物资的需求方面面临两大挑战。由于这类供应品的库存耗尽而需求增加，必须在地方、区域和联邦各级以及在近期、短期和中期范围内最佳地利用资源。一些分销渠道因在线配送需求的增加而不堪重负，能力严重不足，而其他渠道则受到疫情的负面影响，产能闲置，可以重新利用，以减轻现有渠道的压力。这适用于汽车售后市场分销网络，该网络继续作为一项基本服务运作，但需求正在大幅减少，因此提供了可用于帮助抗击大流行的剩余能力。售后市场供应链为该国不同地区提供高效和及时的交付能力，以及安全存储和检索的库存能力。目前的项目将调查和优化汽车售后市场分销网络的能力和效率，以最佳方式提高政府分销网络的能力，以满足医疗保健和公共部门对关键供应品的需求。将开发基于运筹学中最先进技术的建模框架，以集成多个供应链网络以服务于共同目标。我们称这样的框架为：行善供应链。虽然该框架是基于加拿大的汽车售后市场，但它将是通用的，并将拥有必要的工具和机制，以利用现有供应链、物流和分销网络中的闲置产能，在危机时刻可用，以帮助解决紧急需求。该框架将具有双重社会经济效益，即为参与供应链创造经济机会，并确保在需要时获得关键供应。它的更大目标是减少当前和未来形势恶化的风险，就covid-19而言，即疾病传播的风险。

During times of crisis such as the COVID 19 pandemic, the government faces two major challenges with respect to meeting demand for critical supplies such as personal protective equipment (PPE) and test kits. As inventories of such supplies are depleted and demand rises, it becomes essential to make optimal use of resources at the local, regional and federal levels and in the immediate, short and medium time frames. While some distribution channels are overwhelmed with increased demand from online deliveries and suffer serious shortages in capacity, other channels are affected negatively by the pandemic and have idle capacity that can be repurposed to alleviate pressure on existing channels. This applies to the automotive aftermarket distribution network which continues to operate as an essential service but is experiencing significant decrease in demand, and hence offers residual capacity that can be leveraged to help combat the pandemic. The aftermarket supply chain offers efficient and timely delivery capabilities to different regions of the country as well as inventory capacity for safe storage and retrieval. The current project will investigate and optimize the use of the capacity and efficiency of the aftermarket automotive distribution network to optimally enhance the capability of government distribution networks to meet health care and public sector needs for critical supplies. A modeling framework based on state-of-the-art techniques in Operations Research will be developed to integrate multiple supply chain networks to serve a common goal. We call such a framework: Supply Chain for Good. While based on the automotive aftermarket in Canada, the framework will be general and will have the necessary tools and mechanisms to leverage spare capacity in existing supply chain, logistics and distribution networks that become available in times of crisis to help address urgent needs. The framework will have the dual socio-economic benefit of creating economic opportunities for participating supply chains as well as of ensuring critical supplies are available when needed. It has the bigger objective of reducing the immediate and future risk of an aggravated situation, in the case of covid-19, that of the propagation of the disease.