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To develop and test three different inventory management strategies as applied to the complex emergency in south Sudan.

Quantitative modeling, simulation, and statistics.

This research identified critical system factors that contributed most significantly to inventory system performance, and identified strengths and weaknesses of each inventory management strategy.

This research represents a first step in developing inventory management systems for humanitarian relief. Future work would include modeling correlation among relief items, multiple items, and considering the impact of information.

In a domain that has seen limited application of quantitative models, this work demonstrates the performance benefits of using quantitative methods to manage inventory in a relief setting.

This research has value for relief organizations by providing a real‐world application of quantitative inventory management strategies applied to a complex emergency, and demonstrated performance advantages of quantitative versus ad hoc methods. This research has value for researchers by providing a new application of simulation and mathematical modeling (humanitarian relief).

The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction of the two parts of the Special Edition of the journal devoted to the challenges of humanitarian aid logistics. To achieve this, an overview of the humanitarian logistic field is provided focussing on a number of key areas in which the principles and practices supporting commercial supply network management (SNM) have the potential to offer significant improvement in the efficiency and/or effectiveness of the humanitarian logistics preparation and response.

The paper is based on a conceptual discussion of issues of SNM in a humanitarian aid context, linked to the more specific discussions of the contribution of the research presented by the authors of the papers accepted for the special editions.

The paper discusses the concept of SNM and argues that the fundamental principles that have been the subject of considerable academic scrutiny are equally applicable to the humanitarian logistic field – albeit, in some cases, the specific environment may alter the balance of risk/benefit for particular approaches.

The application of commercial SNM theory and practice has received limited consideration within the humanitarian aid logistics literature to date. This paper is designed to redress this shortfall. As a result, it is hoped that it will act as a catalyst for further research and to widen and deepen the resultant debate with a view to improving the outcome for those affected by current and future disasters.

Critical success factors (CSFs) have been widely used in the context of commercial supply chains. However, in the context of humanitarian aid (HA) this is a poorly addressed area and this paper therefore aims to set out the key areas for research.

This paper is based on a conceptual discussion of CSFs as applied to the HA sector. A detailed literature review is undertaken to identify CSFs in a commercial context and to consider their applicability to the HA sector.

CSFs have not previously been identified for the HA sector, an issue addressed in this paper.

The main constraint on this paper is that CSFs have not been previously considered in the literature as applied to HA. The relevance of CSFs will therefore need to be tested in the HA environment and qualitative research is needed to inform further work.

This paper informs the HA community of key areas of activity which have not been fully addressed and offers.

This paper contributes to the understanding of supply chain management in an HA context.