Vahid Khodae: "Balancing Agility and Accuracy for Humanitarian Supply Chain Flexibility"

Supply chains increasingly operate under disruption risk, making flexibility a double-edged sword: it mitigates shortages but can erode planning accuracy and inflate cost and environmental impact. Drawing on interviews with Médecins Sans Frontières–Operational Centre Geneva (MSF-OCG), we study a humanitarian medical supply chain that places infrequent regular orders with long lead times while retaining an “as soon as possible” (ASAP) international reorder option with short lead time. Although ASAP improves responsiveness, practitioners report routine uses even absent demand shocks, suggesting behavioral drivers behind overreliance on flexibility. We frame the setting as a newsvendor problem with a second-order (quick-response) option and investigate whether the mere availability of ASAP alters inventory decisions relative to a baseline without this option. Building on behavioral operations research, we propose a controlled experiment to identify how ASAP availability affects order quantities, stockout and expediting incidence, and cost. Our study contributes by (i) isolating the behavioral effect of flexibility options on demand-planning quality, (ii) quantifying performance consequences relevant to humanitarian logistics, and (iii) informing policy on when to reserve expedited reorders for real shocks. Findings aim to guide organizations in designing planning processes that harness flexibility without undermining accuracy, resource stewardship, and sustainability.