ALAN holds disaster simulation exercise to support supply chain preparedness

This past December, the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) hosted an exercise to examine the readiness and capacity of supply chain networks during an emergency. Representatives from private-sector supply chain companies, government, non-profit, and military organizations participated, using their smartphones and tablets to emulate supply chain decisions before, during, and after a mock disaster event.

The exercise captured real-time data enabling participants to see the full impact of their allocation decisions, and then discuss how their actions along with government policies affected local businesses, communities, and the overall resilience of the supply chain network.

The exercise was held at the George Mason School of Public Policy in Arlington, Va., and was supported in part by a FEMA Regional Catastrophic Planning Grant. Through this grant program, FEMA and a broad cross-section of other public and private entities are exploring new ways to understand catastrophic risk, systemic vulnerability, and mitigate harm to supply chains. ALAN is a key player in this work, which will ultimately result in a concrete preparedness plan for the Mid-Atlantic, including the states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

During the exercise, participants were asked to respond on the spot to constraints imposed by an emergency scenario: gathering information on requirements, sharing situational awareness, identifying alternative solutions, making decisions under uncertainty, and managing the consequences of their own and others’ actions. The simulation allows businesses to confront the supply chain disruption, information scarcity, and agency interface issues that they might deal with in an actual event. During the exercise key transportation providers are made unavailable due to impacts from the disaster, and participants have to identify alternative solutions or determine which customers they won’t be able to serve.

Finding a way to address those constraints led exercise participants to point to the need for building relationships before a disaster occurs. Bill Reynolds, national account representative from Choptank Transport, observed “during a disaster companies will do business with people they have a relationship with.”  This played out during the exercise, when Reynolds noted that he “knew (a fellow participant) before the exercise and so he and I worked together exclusively.”  Reynolds says the exercise has motivated him to reach out to other businesses, government organizations, and nonprofits so that Choptank has relationships in place prior to the next event and can help when called upon.

“Private sector supply chains play an enormous role in communities’ ability to withstand and recover from disasters,” said Kathy Fulton, interim president and director of operations of ALAN. “We want to prepare businesses for the possibility of such an event in their own community. The exercise was intended to highlight the challenges of maintaining operations during a disaster, and to prepare managers to consider in advance of a real emergency some of the most important decisions they will ever face. We hope it prepares them to make better decisions during a real event.”

“Where supply chains are resilient, catastrophe is less likely. But where they fail, catastrophe is much more likely,” said Phil Palin, who led the Mid-Atlantic Supply Chain Resilience project and sponsored the development of the exercise with ALAN. “Too often, the pain of the initial event is amplified by decisions that unintentionally undermine the supply chain. Through this exercise, decision makers will be better prepared to respond to the real thing.”