The humanitarian logistics processes are the same as the ones in business logistics with the addition of the processes related to the evaluation of the scale and the aftermaths of the humanitarian crisis and the mobilization. Generally, there processes are:
1. Planning and preparation – the tasks to be completed, aftereffects, people and organizations in charge, necessary resources;
2. Evaluation of the disaster scale and its aftereffects – establishing the incidental needs of the affected population, capacity estimate, the damage caused to local infrastructure;
3. Assistance request. Resource mobilization – organizational, material, information and financial resources;
1. Procurement – establishing contacts with those suppliers who would provide the right supplies at the right price, at the right time, in the right place and the quantities to satisfy the needs of the victims;
2. Transport – the organization of transport should both facilitate its key function but also exercise control upon the value of transportation costs while continually monitoring, managing and looking for alternative solution to optimize them;
3. Tracking and tracing systems – usually they comprise the link between the information systems and the reality (flow of goods) in the logistics networks. The goal of traceability is to identify the lot of finished products as well as raw materials used for processing those finished goods, and to track this lot and each part of it in the supply chain. While “tracking” systems provide information in real time about the location of a given product as it is moving forward along the supply chain, “tracing” systems provide a track record (backwards) of the full movement of that same product;
4. Storage and inventory management – inventory planning and positioning has become a strategic goal of humanitarian organizations in trying to produce a prompt response in emergency;
5. Distribution and assistance – direct distribution (the movement of the flow of goods from the humanitarian organization to the beneficiaries) and indirect distribution (movement of flow of goods through intermediaries).
