Warehouse Ans Transportation In Humanitarian Logistics

WAREHOUSE

The supplies must be protected in a place until the can be distributed or used, its not only about finding a place to storage them, but to find a place where you can have an organized system that allows you to know the type, quantity and localization of supplies available in that place. Warehousing is one of the most important stages in the humanitarian logistics because the placethat will be used need to fulfill the necessary norms for the maintenance of quality and security of the products. These places are difficult to achieve because normally during disasters, this places must be improvised such as using schools, community centers or gyms.

Types of warehouses

General warehouse office: this is the place where the products stay even for a long time or while they aretaken to a secondary warehouse, usually they are in the capital or in a central point of the affected region.

Slow rotation warehouse: this is where are storage non-urgent supplies, supplies in reserve, or supplies that are not frequently in use such as equipment, tools and spares.

Rapid rotation warehouse: this are where the daily used or frequent products are storage. They are the mostcommon in the operations field and usually have products for rapid distribution between the affected populations.

Collection centers: these are places that are used for the receipt of donations, which rapidly accumulates clothing, food, medicine and other products. In general, it is extremely difficult to organize a storage system due to the lack of space, which make it urgent to separate theminto categories and send them to a warehouse.

Choosing the places

There must be a special effort when finding an appropriate place to storage the supplies, although in the emergency zone there are not many alternatives. These are some basic concepts that are taken into account when choosing a place:

* Type of supply to be storage: food and medications need a fresh, dry and ventilatedplace. Some may even need temperature-controlled place. With other articles such as clothing, equipment and materials have more flexible requirements and may be storage in the same winery.
* Convenience of the place: the size of the place is very important, there must be evaluated the actual capacity (there is always better to have a bigger place) and it is important as well the location inrelation to the operation zone.
I. Internal conditions
II. External conditions

Alternative places for warehousing

There are occasions where there will be not possible to find an adequate place to install a warehouse, so alternatives must be explored. There exists the possibility to build up a place with hard material, or with other materials. The decision of which materials to usedepends on the expected duration of the operation, and on the possibilities to use a place with better conditions on the following days.

Staff required

Only one person will be responsible of the administration, but he may have assistants depending on the volume of the operation. It is really important to avoid having many people with the same level of authority because this lead tomisinterpretations in the identification of responsibilities.

There is needed a group of people to be in charge of the manipulation of the supplies in the warehouse, this group can be formed by volunteers from organizations, or from community members. Even tough there are not specialized procedures, volunteers have to catch up with a basic training to complete successfully the work required.

Theadministrator has to be paid due to the nature of his functions and responsibilities. There must be hired security personnel, not only for monitoring, but to control the arrival of non-authorized people to the warehouse surroundings.

TRANSPORTATION

The transportation is the component of the logistic chain that is in charge of bringing the assistance to the site where it is required. When...