Toward Humanitarian Supply Chains Enhancement by using Physical Internet Principles

Humanitarian organisations need to be efficient and effective and to do so, rely on their supply chain and logistics efforts. However, the urgency context, the destabilised environment as well as large uncertainties often affect the performance of the relief. Symptoms such as redundancies or operation lack, mismanagement and high costs call the methods of humanitarian organisations into question. This research work examines the potentiality that the evolution directly to a hyper-connected world could benefit to humanitarian organisations. To this end, Physical Internet a new concept of global logistics networks based on the hyperconnection notion has been studied. Designed to address most of the stakes of tomorrow multiplication of flows, environmental emergency, performance and speed pressures it might present various interests for the humanitarian sector. In a first approach, some Physical Internet principles have been projected on typical humanitarian logistics operations related to transportation, storage allocation and inventory management. It appears interests in terms of savings, efficiency, sustainability and responsiveness. However, such reengineering comes with a cost and would require significant change such as a large reshape of the current logistics model and legal framework as well as further reflections regarding information management and technology development.