Isenberg School Researchers Help Food Bank with Supply Chain Management
November 12, 2009
Senay Solak, Justin Fisher"People usually associate supply chains with business, but they can play a crucial role in nonprofit organizations as well," observes Isenberg School operations management professor Senay Solak. A year ago Solak and MBA candidate Justin Fisher '10 MBA joined forces on behalf of the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts in Hatfield. The organization distributes food to 400 food pantries, survival centers, and other agencies in Western Massachusetts.
During a nine-month project, the Isenberg duo assessed the efficiency and equity of the Food Bank's distribution of food to 191 emergency agencies. The food was purchased with state funding from the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program, which parsed the comestibles into ground beef, peanut butter, jelly, spaghetti, and seven other categories.
The Challenge of Food Allocation. In its allocation of food to recipient agencies, the Food Bank employed 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," recalls Fisher, who joined the Isenberg MBA program with degrees in chemistry and polymer science. "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," remarks 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," remarks 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," notes Fisher. "Of course, it's ultimately their decision how to make the most of our work," adds 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."
