Supply and demand planning in the military

Filed in archive General on July 21, 2008

Some while ago I read that supplying Canada's war effort in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has been hampered by delays in shipping everything from spare parts for battered vehicles to Medical devices .

In the addition to the above mentioned issue, they had lost track of the inventory in many items needed in Afghanistan. This made me think a bit about the complexity of military supply chains: In the war context, historical data can't help you determine the amount of the inventory required with high precision so you have to build a partly agile supply chain which rapidly fulfills the demand at the end of the chain.

In the case of Canadian military, they have created some degree of agility by using some chartered flights using russian airplanes. Using 3rd party service provider (here russian forces), they have kept the costs down and have gotton rid of maintenance of air freight.

Do you have more ideas for improving SCM in this area?