Fritz Has A Better Idea For Disaster Logistics

       
Lynn Fritz is traveling north on the Pacific Coast Highway having just completed a successful Humanitarian Logistics Seminar on the campus of Stanford University last Thursday (September 8).
    Taking the mission of Fritz Institute which he founded a couple of years ago to the halls of academia is nothing new to this well-known cargo executive turned philanthropist.
    You get the feeling while talking to this guy that here at last is a true titan of the air cargo industry who has turned his knowledge and fortune toward the greater good.
    It’s not about money either.
    Probably somebody else has given more to help others.
    But Lynn Fritz is on a mission.
    He will bring what he knows about logistics to the humanitarian effort worldwide, empowering NGO’s (Non Government Organizations) such as Red Cross and Salvation Army and others in the art of what Lynn Fritz knows best, the on time delivery of the goods where they are needed.
    Although he has spent a lifetime in logistics, Lynn Fritz also knows that he cannot do it alone.
    So in addition to using his fortune to gather some of the best and the brightest at Fritz Institute, he is also out there in the field, wrapped up in meetings, and sponsoring logistics educational encounters.
    Fritz Institute spends a lot of time working to get humanitarian logistics right as it emerges as the vehicle for real change in a world that is increasingly filled with emergencies.
    Lynn Fritz says:
    “If you simply give money, it is one thing to one organization.
    “If you give services or create technology, this can be replicated by every other humanitarian aid organization.
    “This means you get leverage and the result factor is bigger.”
    Just this past March, Fritz Institute headlined the former United States Secretary of State, The Honorable Madeline Albright, at Georgetown University for its Third Lecture on Humanitarian Relief.
    The Secretary noted:
    “Fritz Institute’s special expertise is in the delivery of humanitarian assistance and it provides the leading edge in logistics for that chain of need. And this is indeed a vital role, because when disaster strikes, help that arrives too late is actually no help at all, and even a few hours can spell the difference between starvation and nourishment, destruction and survival.”
    Right now with world headlines coming out of the Southeastern USA those words take on special meaning.
    Lynn Fritz puts it on the line:
    “The back room of relief operations needs to be strengthened.
    “When disaster strikes and lives are at risk because of man-made and natural causes, good things happen when the private and public sector effectively work to support the local people on the ground.
    “Humanitarian relief organizations are the primary vehicle for disaster relief in the aftermath of a catastrophic event.
    “Fritz Institute has identified several issues that limit the ability of these organizations to tackle the challenges of disaster relief.
    “Logistics is the heart of aid, with 80% of all humanitarian workers interacting with the supply chain during a relief effort.
    “But mandates of these NGO’s often tie funds to direct relief – not infrastructure, so there is little research about the optimal structure or operations practices of logistics among these care givers.
    “The private sector plays a limited role, and primarily only during the emergency phase of disasters.”
    Fritz Institute also operates out on the front-line, in places like Asia during the 2004 Tsunami disaster, and in Africa where the organization works closely with the Red Cross.
    Fritz Institute sent a team of private sector and humanitarian professionals who joined together to observe and understand the complexities of tsunami relief operations in Thailand, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka.
    The team, led by Fritz Institute Managing Director Anisya Thomas, whose recorded observations here combined both heart-felt observation with hard nose logic:
    “I sat for a moment on the train in Galle, where over 1000 people perished when the place was submerged.
    “ I said a prayer for those who had lost their lives on a journey to visit friends and relatives or to return home.
    “As I looked out of the window, I could not help but notice the bee-hive of activity all around.
    “There were USAID tractors and earthmoving equipment clearing debris.
    “AusAid was testing water. The able-bodied men from the affected areas had been enlisted in a program to clear debris.
    “Small NGOs had set up makeshift compounds. “There were tents of every hue, pink, blue, yellow, olive, representing the variety of relief organizations, each with their own plans and supplies.
    “There were people from all over the world helping. “How much of this would really help, I wondered? “How many of those helping had done this before? “What was the mix of good intention, expertise and experience?”
      The result of this yeoman effort is a detailed study report entitled:
    “Logistics and the Effective Delivery of Humanitarian Relief.”
    The report includes findings by members of Fritz Institute in partnership with KPMG and MIT.
    Based on the experiences of about 100 logisticians from 18 of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations, at both headquarters and in the field the report deals with both the myth and reality of getting help where it is needed during a disaster.
    “During the early media reports, humanitarian aid staff, donors and the public were learning about the many obstacles to getting relief supplies into the countries affected by the Tsunami.
    “While many of these obstacles were due to the collapse of infrastructures in the affected region, the challenges were exacerbated by a shortage of trained logistics experts, limited automation, and a lack of access to information on the ground.”
Lynn Fritz:
    “One of the lessons from the 2004 Tsunami is the need to create a much larger pool of logisticians who have formalized training and professional certification to instill standards for service delivery and collaboration.”
    The report finds for example that many of the initial assessments of the tsunami’s impact were incomplete because no one was talking to local experts.
    Only 38% of participating relief organizations had assessment team members from the affected area.
    Sparse information and involvement of local people in the field can be attributed to a lack of recent programs in the affected region, as well as political conflicts and government disarray, such as in Banda Aceh, where international aid organizations have been blocked from entry for some time.
    “The humanitarian community has learned that some of the bottlenecks that were not anticipated may have been better planned for by recognizing the critical role of logisticians,” Lynn Fritz said.
    While most respondents to the survey felt that the initial relief effort was effective, only about 26% of the responding relief organizations had access to software that provided track and trace capabilities to help anticipate the receipt of procured goods in the field.
    Most responding organizations continue to use manual, spreadsheet, or “home grown” technologies for tracking goods in the field.
    “Humanitarian organizations need information technology solutions that support procurement, distribution, tracking and tracing of goods and funds through receipt in the field.
    “We hope that the prominence of the logistics challenges in the Tsunami relief effort will motivate donors and humanitarian sector leadership to expedite their support for creating connectivity between headquarters and the field,” Mr. Fritz continued.
    The chaos of the first couple of weeks of the relief effort was intensified by hundreds of relief agencies entering the affected region to set up operations to provide aid. Not only was the magnitude of the damage to the affected communities and people unprecedented, but the number of relief organizations offering to help and the lack of a formalized process to organize these efforts led to competition for transportation, procurement and shared coordination of relief delivery.
    According to the survey, the Tsunami experience demonstrated that collaboration was successful in meeting immediate needs on an ad-hoc basis and that there is a need to focus processes and resources to strengthen centralized collaboration mechanisms between central relief actors from the humanitarian sector, as well as those private sector, military or other partners who step up to assist with a particular relief operation.
    The survey report, Logistics and the Effective Delivery of Humanitarian Relief, is available at www.fritzinstitute.org.
For the past three years Fritz Institute has sponsored an annual event called “Crossroads Conference”.
    Crossroads 2004 provided a round table setting to facilitate a discussion among leaders in supply chain management from corporations and humanitarian organizations, as well as representatives of academia.
    Interestingly the gathering held last October 2004, about two months before the Tsunami disaster, focused on the topic:
    “How can the private sector share some of its expertise and lessons learned with the humanitarian sector in a non-intrusive manner?”
    Participants analyzed challenges and opportunities that the international humanitarian relief community faces today in disaster response.
    Working groups explored ways to apply logistics and supply chain expertise from the business community to help strengthen the capabilities of humanitarian organizations.
    Lynn Fritz built the Fritz Companies into a global logistics management powerhouse, serving importers and shippers worldwide by inventing or innovating comprehensive supply chain solutions in door-to-door transportation and materials management using sophisticated information systems.
    The Fritz organization gained a solid reputation by providing value-added services.
    In addition to its forwarding, customs brokerage and logistics services, the company pioneered a range of intermodal transfer services, duty drawback options, consulting on tax, trade and tariff matters, market research and training services.
    At the point the Fritz Companies were bought up by United Parcel Service in 2001, as UPS' first major freight forwarding acquisition since that company went public, Fritz was a $1.6 billion outfit that since 1933 had developed an organization that owned and operated 400 facilities in more than 120 countries, with 10,000 employees globally.
    Fritz's customers included some of the world's most recognized brands across a broad range of industries, including mass retailing, computer retail and services, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals.
    But rather than packing himself into a Baracalounger and sipping high-balls at sundown, Lynn Fritz having cleared his life’s work, promptly turned his attention to using his knowledge of the way things work in transportation toward helping others.
    “What we do in logistics is the unglamorous stuff of transportation, the nuts and bolts of making things work.
    “Bringing my life’s work in logistics to the world humanitarian effort is absolutely the most exciting prospect for change,” Lynn Fritz said.