THE ART OF VOICE

Introduction

 Nowadays, despite of technological advances, one of the main barriers to the countries' sustainable development is suffering from natural disasters (earthquake, flood, storm, lightning, avalanche, tornado, fire, volcanic burst and etc.) as well as unnatural ones (war, terrorist attacks, road accidents, industrial accidents, political issues, immigration, homelessness and etc.) and unpreparedness and inappropriate confrontation against these disasters impose heavy damages and losses to nations and their properties which might sometimes be irrecoverable. What happens in a part of the world, influences on the other parts' activities. When disasters and crises take place continuously in a part of today's world, their economic, social and emotional effects are not limited to the part facing them directly only, but their second and third-order effects remain in the form of the wave in supply chains all over the world. On the 27th of August 1883, explosion and eruption in Krakatoa, Indonesia left 100000 dead behind and the explosion had been heard from 3000 miles away. Weeks later people in Australia, Netherland, Berlin, and New York realized the real details of this disaster (BEAMON, 2004). On Friday the 11th of March 2011, the east coasts of Japan were destroyed by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Many people around the world watched this disaster live. Therefore, disasters and crises generate influences needing immediate action aiming at the reduction of these effects (social, humanitarian and economic) and speeding up the recovery process. In the heart of these challenges lays HDRSC (Humanitarian disaster relief supply chain).

   According to investigations, Iran is among the first ten disaster-prone and the sixth earthquake-prone countries of the world. Random and unpredictable nature of natural disasters (especially earthquakes) requires designing thorough crisis management plans to reduce the risks and alleviate the sufferings caused by the crisis. In fact, the main purpose of relief responses and reactions is better planning for encountering these types of phenomena and increasing public awareness to be able to decrease death and injuries as well as reducing property loss (Bozorgi-Amiri, Jabalameli, & Al-E-Hashem, 2013).       Among natural disasters, three specific ones- earthquake, flood and drought- cause the most damages in Iran. According to the international institute of seismology and earthquake engineering, nearly 83% of the population in Iran live in areas with relatively much danger of earthquake and 51% are subject to flood. Deadly earthquakes in Iran are because Iran is located on one of the two large seismic belts in the world known as Alpa as well as existing numerous faults in Iran plateau.

      On the other hand, based on geological studies, it would not be beyond expectation for occurring at least one deadly earthquake in Tehran every 151 years. By the last earthquake in Tehran (with larger than 7 in Richter scale) which occurred 168 years ago as well as several crucial faults located around Tehran, one could expect the possibility of a deadly earthquake every moment in Tehran district. This problem together with Tehran condition from different aspects of unprincipled structures, population concentration, political-cultural concentration and probable damages in water, electricity and gas lines after earthquake would lead Tehran earthquake to being deadlier; the way that, based on existing reports, it will be considered as one of the largest disasters of 

the world from humanitarian and financial losses point of view. Since the wideness and intensity of natural disasters are increasing due to reasons, like population growth, climate changes, and global integration, it is predicted that current aids would be insufficient. On the other hand, the nature of natural disasters is the way that responding to them should be carried out in a short time. In such urgent and complicated situations, the decider should quickly and effectively respond to logistic problems and transfer suffered people from damaged areas to a specified center; where this will not also be possible without precise planning and systematic relief network.

 Although damages caused by these accidents will not be recoverable, especially financially and mentally, with predictive actions and appropriate plans for being well prepared to encounter these disasters, the damages could be reduced to the minimum. Since the intensity and wideness of these accidents are large, the produced volume of requests for aid and rescue operation would also be large after occurrence and aid centers, which can supply the city needs in normal situations, are often insufficient for quick response to the produced requests in these situations.

   Furthermore, it would be worth noticing that dealing with victims, transporting necessary items, offering medical first aids and transferring the injured to relief centers in suitable time, specifically the first 72 hours after the disaster (the golden relief time) have important role in reduction of loss and disabilities caused by these accidents (Jang, Lien & Tsal, 2009).   Therefore, the main necessity is the difference between crisis and normal conditions. One of the important actions necessary to be conducted in the case of the crisis is to optimize the distribution and assignment of resources among people. Time has a crucial influence on the increasing number of rescued people through relief activities. Since precisely determining the demand for critical items in case of disasters, among which medicine is the most important one, is indeed difficult and impossible in many situations, this adds up the difficulty of the problem. In fact, the main difference between the problem in crisis and in the normal situation is the severe uncertainty and time limitation in helping the victims.

 This paper introduces the opportunities and importance of the crisis supply chain. It has been attempted to detect what distinguishes the crisis supply chain. In the case of a crisis, many things are in danger the most critical of which is the staff's lives. Designing, implementing and managing the crisis supply chain, and especially it's logistic, one could not only reduce the costs but also it could save more lives. 

An Introduction to Supply Chain Management (SCM)

 A supply chain includes all stages that, directly or indirectly, play roles in meeting a customer's demand. In an ordinary supply chain, raw materials are sent by providers to factories and, then, the products produced in the factories are delivered to central warehouses and distributor ones and, from there, they are transferred to retailers and, eventually, are delivered to the final customer which is the consumer. Thereby, an article passes through different stages of the chain to reach the consumer. In some states, the article is stored and in others, it is shipped. The Supply chain members are generally as following: Providers, Stocks of raw materials, Distribution centers, Distributors, Retailers, and Final customers. 

Figure (1) shows the schematic of a supply chain: 

Activities of the supply chain start with the customer order and end when the 

customer pays the expenses of received article and service and the final product is delivered to him. The difference between the money spent by the customer with total costs spent by the whole chain to produce and distribute the article shows the chain profitability. Accordingly, the success of a chain is defined by its profitability and supply chain management requires managing the flows between the stages and inside each of the stages of the chain to maximize the total profit. Thereby, supply chain management would be definable as below: 

A set of guidelines for integration of the chain members (providers, producers, distributors, retailers, and final customers) whose purpose is to reduce the system costs and to increase the level of service to customers (Yi & Özdamar, 2007). From this definition two following points would be comprehended:

 First, the supply chain management pays attention to any approach that leads to the reduction of costs and plays a role in meeting the customer's needs, from provider and production facilities to raw material stocks of distribution centers as well as retailers and product stock. In fact, in some supply chain analysis, it would be essential to focus on providers and customers, because they have a critical role in the formation of the supply chain.

 Second, the supply chain management means increasing effectivity as well as reducing costs within the whole system. Employing the well-known approaches in supply chain management, the total cost of the system, including transportation costs, stock, material handling and etc., would be decreased. However, this does not emphasize that transportation, stocks and other costs will be reduced only, but, using a systematic approach, the supply chain management attempts to improve the whole system efficiency and level up serving the customer as well.

 Since supply chain management emphasizes integration between providers, distributors, and final customers, it covers most of the company activities at different levels, from strategic levels to tactical and operational ones. Main barriers for integrating the supply chain are as following:

 1- Different members of the supply chain may have different and incompatible goals. For instance, the providers would usually want the producers to buy a large amount of article with constant volume and flexible delivery date form them. However, the producers are supposed to be flexible concerning the customer need as well as changes in the demand, because the production decisions are often made without exact information about the demand. 

2- The capability of producers in adopting supply with demand is highly dependent on their ability to change the size of order lot and, for this reason, they are willing to buy in smaller lot-sizes and with variable volume. Similarly, the purpose of producers in productions with high volumes is usually in contrast with the target of distributors and shopping centers, because they always want to reduce their stock and increase their order frequency which could lead to an incline in transportation costs. At the end of the chain, i.e. from the customer side, when a change is induced in the demand, all members of the chain should change themselves with respect to it, but a lot of time is required to have this change applied to all levels of the chain, because this change accompanies a time delay. The main problem is this fluctuation in demand gets more intense when approaching the beginning of the chain. This phenomenon is called the Bullwhip effect in the supply chain (Yi & Özdamar, 2007).