Can Supply Chain Design
Really Save Lives?
A letter from Don Hicks,
LLamasoft President & CEO

Hi, thanks for reading! There’s a lot going on in the world these days that has implications for supply chain strategy: financial crisis and deflationary prices, plunging consumer demand, a push for trade barriers, fuel price volatility, cap and trade in the United States. 

There’s also a lot going on over here at LLamasoft: the version 5.1 release and a remarkable breakthrough technology called Visual Modeler, new customers and new employees, and a whole host of amazing things we have planned to release on an unsuspecting public over the next 12 months. Keep your seatbelts fastened, we’re getting ready for take-off…

Although each of these topics deserve their own space and discussion, I’d instead like to set them aside for now and ask you to take a few minutes with me and discuss something different and important: LLamasoft’s new initiative in the public health sector.

Over the last few months, LLamasoft Consultants have been on the ground in Guatemala, Lesotho, Kenya, and other countries working alongside partners such as USAID, JSI (John Snow, Inc.), DENIDA, UNICEF, the World Bank, and numerous Ministries of Health (see full story here). LLamasoft’s mission in these projects has been the same as always: to help people make better decisions and improve their supply chains through the use of powerful planning algorithms and software applications. 

In these challenging and uncertain times, we tend to focus on the short term even more than usual.  We worry about the financial difficulties we’re facing. Jobs, companies, and entire industries seem like they could disappear in the next news cycle. Yet, for all this economic trouble in US and Europe, business and people keep on going, adapting and surviving, and riding out the turbulence.

In some parts of the world, however, people aren’t getting by and they aren’t surviving.  Lesotho, a small country of 2 million people in southern Africa, has a nearly 30% HIV/AIDS infection rate.  The life expectancy for its citizens has dropped to under 40 years, and continues to fall. The global community, as they have become aware of the difficulties facing Lesotho, has donated supplies, assistance, and money.  Yet, shortages persist.  Stock outs of essential medicines are common, and the people who most need these supplies continue to face the awful prospect of suffering and dying from preventable conditions.

Somewhere in the world, the needed medicines and supplies are available, and somewhere else in the world, there are people in need. The difference, the connecting of the right quantity of the right product at the right time to the right place, is the supply chain. In our project to date, we have seen distribution networks that slowly evolved over time, but the supply chains were not “designed” with the current reality in mind. As a result, we see heroic efforts at improving supply chain operations that struggle against the very system they are trying to improve: networks that seem designed to actually make high service and low cost impossible!  Sound familiar? 

With the help of our customers, and through the hard work of our employees, LLamasoft has become leader in supply chain network design and strategy.  As the leader, we have a responsibility to help solve the toughest supply chain strategy problems. To that end, LLamasoft has created a new public health practice as part of the LLamasoft Solutions team. Over the coming months you’ll see announcements on our website, and new materials posted. Feel free to check it out and get involved!  We have other new initiatives planned in collaboration with our development partners, several universities—and anyone else who wants to help.

As we rally and pull out of the economic slump, which we undoubtedly will, let’s try to make sure and bring more of the developing world along with us. With your continued support and help, LLamasoft will make a difference by applying supply chain planning technologies and top notch support to the places and problems that need it most.