News: Partnering to Improve Lives in Frontier Economies

The Frontier Economies Logistics Lab (FELL) meeting will convene more than 100 forward-thinking supply chain leaders from the private sector, academia, and global development community to exchange ideas and harness commercial tools to enhance supply chains and improve people’s lives in developing countries.

“This summer FELL meeting will focus on applying specific commercial tools and supply chain solutions in developing country contexts,” says Dale Rogers, FELL director and professor of logistics and supply chain management at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University (ASU). “Much of the world’s growth will come from frontier economies, so there’s a lot of interest from the private sector to learn from the development and humanitarian aid community in how to best manage supply chains in the developing world, including how to work efficiently in complex environments while making the world a better place. In turn, the private sector can help introduce, test, and scale proven commercial solutions in frontier economies.”

The interactive event will feature supply chain experts from Dell, IBM, and Starbucks, and Chemonics experts from the USAID Global Health Supply Chain – Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project. For the past three years, a Chemonics-led consortium of partners has applied the best of commercial supply chains on GHSC-PSM to ensure that uninterrupted supplies of health commodities arrive on time to save lives and create healthier futures for people worldwide. As highlighted in its latest quarterly performance report, the project has used commercial tools and techniques to deliver more than $219 million in health commodities in just three months at an 85 percent on-time delivery rate — exceeding its 80 percent target. The project has also saved more than $80 million in commodity and logistics costs to date.

“Chemonics is excited to be a FELL partner and to host the FELL summer meeting,” says Jamey Butcher, executive vice president of the Global Health and Supply Chain Office at Chemonics. We look forward to sharing our experiences incorporating innovative commercial solutions on our GHSC-PSM project and learning about new solutions that can help us continually enhance our techniques and in doing so, improve lives around the world.”

At the FELL meeting, private sector leaders from IBM, Dell, and Starbucks will cover topics ranging from the use of machine learning in reverse logistics to the use of blockchain and the Internet of Things in supply chain management.

Deo Kimera, Chemonics’ country director in Ghana on the GHSC-PSM project, will participate on a panel moderated by ASU on ways to increase data visibility in supply chains to enhance decision-making, including panelists from APL Logistics, Project 44, Zenysis Technologies, and Hua Ni, GHSC-PSM’s supply chain optimization lead from IBM.

Finally, Michael Egboh, Chemonics’ GHSC-PSM country director in Nigeria, will join a panel  focused on workforce development in frontier economies, moderated by Chemonics’ project director, Wanda Jaskiewicz, and featuring panelists from the Africa Resource Centre for Supply Chain and ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business. Learn more about how Chemonics and ASU are partnering on global workforce development.

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