Improving the Vehicle Supply Chain at UNHCR

In 2014 UNHCR introduced a centralized fleet management program named Global Fleet Management (GFM). Now, country offices request to lease vehicles from UNHCR. However, this vehicle supply process (VSP) has substantial room for improvement. This thesis focuses on improving the VSP of the GFM program. By means of a discrete event simulation model, we analyze two supply chain interventions. First, we consider inventory control policies that regulate the inventory position at each point in time. Second, we analyze a demand smoothing policy, which creates a more stable demand flow. Results indicate that implementing a guaranteed service level in combination with time-varying base stocks yields substantial improvements with respect to lead times at a marginal increment in costs. This is an important finding for UNHCR, as this implies that realizing a much better service level does not need to be expensive. We also show that introducing a simple smoothing policy results in a lower level of workload variability at the hub.