A knowledgeable staff is a key asset for any organization. Training logistics staff members ensures that they will fulfill the Six Rights by delivering—
the right goods
in the right quantities
and the right condition
to the right place
at the right time
for the right cost.
Trained, skilled employees can help create an efficient supply chain that will serve the customer and keep costs down. To serve customers, the staff must have knowledge, skills, motivation, tools, and a supportive environment. Organizational strengthening can improve a supply chain if the weaknesses include insufficient skills and knowledge, workflow inefficiencies, system procedures, or system structure. Organizational strengthening alone cannot correct structural and resource constraints, but it can add to your staffs’ skills, knowledge, and information, enabling them to effectively manage and continuously improve the logistics system.
The project uses the following organizational strengthening interventions—
An organization’s overall performance and its ultimate success depend on how well the individual worker performs. Sustained improved performance also depends on how the worker relates to the organization—its work processes, units, teams, and other workers. You can use organizational strengthening to systematically identify barriers that could prevent workers from fulfilling their professional potential.
Interventions can work at all levels, including policies, communication systems, and compensation systems. A leader or manager trying to improve performance should consider how a solution at one level will affect or support another level, then another level, and, ultimately, how it will affect the worker. You must carefully plan any intervention to ensure that it creates a synergy that will result in the desired outcome.
Process mapping is an excellent example of an organizational strengthening tool that groups can use to make their systems more efficient by examining the steps required to complete particular tasks. Rarely do organizations examine an entire process for accomplishing work services or outputs—ordering, receiving, and distributing commodities. Rarely is one person knowledgeable about or responsible for the process from beginning to end. As a result, most processes evolve over time and are not written down (job descriptions or other documentation) or evaluated. As much as 80 percent of the actual activity in any major work process may remain invisible or undocumented.
During process mapping, to detect system inefficiencies, the participant visualizes and records every action step taken during a specific process. The DELIVER project used process mapping to improve logistics systems in Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania.
Click here to view or download a diagram (in PowerPoint) of a small section of the process map for the contraceptive supply chain of the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana.
Download a copy of the report, Ghana: Process Mapping. First Step to Reengineering the Health Supply Chains of the Public Sector System (PDF in Adobe Acrobat).
For more information about the project’s work with process mapping, please contact askdeliver@jsi.com.
The USAID | DELIVER PROJECT uses Human Performance Improvement (HPI) to enhance individual performance. This careful, systematic process identifies the barriers that prevent workers from achieving the level of performance needed to contribute to the success of the organization. The project designs solutions to overcome these barriers quickly and effectively, enabling individuals to improve their professional performance and meet their full potential. A critical focus of HPI is to align the organization’s mission with the knowledge and skills needed by its staff, while ensuring all environmental (i.e., organizational) issues support effective job performance. The project uses individual performance improvement interventions to achieve maximum worker performance, including two critical categories:
Instructional interventions
These interventions include—
distance education (both computer- and print-based)
