Supply Chain Resilience

How do private supply chains actually function on the ground after disasters, and can government relief help—rather than hinder—their recovery to improve outcomes for disaster survivors? Following the 2017 hurricane season, CNA analysts specializing in supply chain resilience were on the ground with warehouse managers, truckers, water supply engineers, FEMA officials and shopkeepers with one goal: to get a real picture of how supply chains for food, fuel and water react in the aftermath of disaster. This data collection effort took them to Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

For more information on this study, read the CNA report Supply Chain Resilience and the 2017 Hurricane Season: https://www.cna.org/reports/2018/01/s...

More information on all of CNA's work on supply chain resilience is available at
https://www.cna.org/centers-and-divis...

Complete transcript:
The 2017 hurricane season was a historic moment by nearly any measure. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria broke records for rainfall, wind intensity, and total cost of damages. The season was notable for the immense disruption caused to supply chains that deliver life-saving commodities such as food, clean drinking water, fuel, and medical goods to survivors. The resulting size of the relief efforts to support impacted communities was unprecedented.

A recent CNA report explored the extent of damage and resilience demonstrated by supply chains. CNA analysts visited Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands and interviewed those who witnessed the storms’ power and work toward recovery, from grocers to federal emergency managers. What can their accounts tell us about supply chain resilience?

Supply chains are organized to respond to the pull of customer demand by producing goods and shipping them through efficient pathways in order to reach their destination quickly. If the demand pull exceeds the capacity of the supply chain, a bottleneck is then created when moving goods. After a disaster, power and telecommunications go down, ports close, roads are blocked, workers can't get to work, and key facilities in the supply chain sustain damage. It's a race against time to get life-saving commodities to survivors. The emergency management community, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, begins pushing supplies into the disaster zone. Private sector supply chain purveyors begin working to reopen their facilities, reroute products, and restore commercial exchange.

Restoring the flow of goods in the aftermath of a disaster is what can separate a disaster from a true catastrophe. CNA’s analysis demonstrates the public and private sector supply chains do not always have a complementary relationship. They are often unaware of each other's actions. They collide and compete for resources and hinder recovery. After Hurricane Maria's landfall, FEMA began the largest food mission in the agency's history. The story on the ground was actually one of surprising resilience. A grocery distributor was moving seven times his normal volume just eight days after the storm, long before relief supplies arrived from the mainland. A grocery store in the mountains of central Puerto Rico was opened just three days after landfall, operating on an all-cash basis with no power but serving its customers. Emerging from these stories are strategic recommendations for government and private sector supply chain operators. By working together, they can expedite the restoration of lifeline supply chains and transport goods to disaster survivors.

CNA experts recommend planners: (1) identify the most at-risk densely populated areas vulnerable to supply chain disruption, (2) identify key nodes and links along the supply chain for water food fuel and other critical needs. (3) Develop a sentinel system for monitoring flow through these nodes and links during disaster, and (4) give particular attention to potential bottlenecks within demand and supply networks and focus on how to alleviate them.

Our nation's ability to support local supply chain resilience during disasters is still evolving. Informed by CNA’s work, government agency managers are already taking lessons learned from the 2017 hurricane season and adopting new response protocols to better align public and private sector efforts in preparation for future storms.