Disaster Relief Supply Chain Management Game - Distributing Medical Supplies

This exercise is designed to provide practice in managing an inventory of medicine during a large-scale public health emergency. Players act as the inventory manager at a facility that receives, stores, stages (RSS) and allocates inventory to multiple points of delivery (POD) where they are then dispensed for treatment.

The Situation

Three locations in the northeastern region of the United States have been struck by a terrorist group that has spread anthrax. At central locations in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia car bombs have been set off that released anthrax spores in the immediate area of each blast. While anthrax is not contagious, like the flu or Covid-19, when inhaled the anthrax spores cause vomiting, shortness of breath, and eventual death if not treated immediately. These symptoms may take hours or days to manifest.

There is an antidote to anthrax, a powerful antibiotic called doxycycline (DOX) which must be taken by infected victims soon after first symptoms to minimize the risk of death. Supplies of DOX are limited, but the United States does keeps some supplies in a number of disease control centers around the country.

In the event of an emergency, the plan is to ship the drug from the nearest disease control center to the site of the attack, for treatment of infected patients. Due to the attack at multiple sites, the distribution of the drug is more complicated due to the great amount needed in each of the attack locations. Public health officials have setup a central receipt, storing, and staging (RSS) facility in Washington, D.C. and suppliers are being asked to ship any DOX to this central location.

You have been given the job of allocating the incoming RSS facility inventory of DOX to the attack sites in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The army has made a helicopter available for the shipments and a schedule has been established so that shipments can be made to the sites every six hours over the next 3 days. After that, someone else will next take over for you. Supplies are finite: it is not possible to give all the sites an unlimited supply. Fatalities will occur if sufficient DOX is not available at that site.

Currently, the New York, Boston, and Philadelphia disaster sites all anticipate having patients in need of DOX, but nobody knows exactly how many. The helicopter is leaving in a few minutes, and you need to decide how much to send to each site.