Isenberg School researchers advise Food Bank on supply chain management
During a nine-month project, Senay Solak, assistant professor of Operations Management, and MBA candidate Justin Fisher used supply chain modeling to develop distribution alternatives for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and the 191 agencies it serves.
“People usually associate supply chains with business, but they can play a crucial role in nonprofit organizations as well,” said Solak. A year ago, Solak and Fisher joined forces on behalf of the Hatfield-based Food Bank, which distributes food to food pantries, survival centers and other agencies in the region.
The duo assessed the efficiency and equity of the Food Bank’s distribution of food to 191 emergency agencies. Purchased with funding from the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program, the food included ground beef, peanut butter, jelly, spaghetti and seven other categories.
In its allocation of food to recipient agencies, the Food Bank used a computer model that it had developed in-house several years before. “But the Food Bank itself considered the model to be less than optimal,” said Fisher. “After the model determined the different quantities of food destined for each agency, the Food Bank’s staff would adjust the distribution to capture what they believed was a fairer allocation. Our goal was to improve the accuracy of initial model-based allocations and to reduce the staff time expended in tweaking them.”
Solak and Fisher considered alternative allocation models, but they realized that the economy and the Food Bank were in a crisis mode. “You don’t change fire hose technology in the middle of a dangerous blaze; the Food Bank staff was preoccupied with distributing food during the worst economic freefall in a generation,” said Solak, whose research and teaching also include management of air transportation operations and technology portfolios.
Instead, Solak and Fisher focused on a more approachable issue. The Food Bank and the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program anchored measurement of the poverty rate and subsequent food distribution on the county level. “That meant that an agency in a distressed city would get shortchanged if its poverty level exceeded its county’s,” said Fisher.
To counter that, the researchers developed alternative models based on the zip codes where the recipient agencies were located — a measure that more accurately reflected their needs. “The Food Bank staff seemed happy with our work and was encouraged by the results of some of our allocations,” said Fisher. “Of course, it’s ultimately their decision how to make the most of our work,” said Solak. “In any event, we’ve used business operations skills on behalf of a nonprofit agency that is an asset to Western Massachusetts. For me, doing pro bono work like that is both a privilege and a responsibility.”
By Lou Wigdor
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Isenberg School of Management
November 17, 2009.
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