Research On Buy Back Contract In Collaborating Humanitarian Logistics

In recent years, natural disasters happened more frequently, caused extremely serious consequences for society as a whole. The role of humanitarian logistics in rescue process gets more and more attention and recognition. However, since the inherently chaotic post-disaster relief environment and there are competitions between the involved members of the humanitarian relief operation, humanitarian logistics participants are lack of coordination and cooperation in the implementation of the rescue process. This leads to reduced efficiency of rescue operations, increased costs of these activities, and adverse consequences for the entire humanitarian logistics supply chain participants. An effective mechanism is needed to resolve this issue. In the commercial supply chain, contractual mechanism is an important tool for collaboration. In this paper, with the consideration of the characteristics of humanitarian logistics, the author used the buy-back contract, a common commercial supply chain contract model, to analyze the collaboration in humanitarian logistics.First, this paper reviewed the current research on humanitarian logistics and supply chain contract both at home and abroad. On this basis, this paper elaborated related theories of humanitarian logistics and supply chain contract, the definition of a humanitarian logistics, and summed up the collaboration issue in humanitarian logistics. Then the author analyzed the way to solve the collaboration issue in the following steps:1) Analyzed the strategy for the humanitarian logistic supply chain (consisting of a relief organization and a material supplier) as a whole and strategies for different participants when there’s no contract involved in reactive response (after disaster) decision and proactive disaster response (before disaster) decision.2) Analyzed the level of collaboration in the supply chain using a buy back contract model.The result showed that the use of a buy back contract can increase the level of collaboration between relief organization and material supplier in a humanitarian logistics supply chain. In order to ensure the interests of both parties were greater than that before the contract was used, the author adjusted some parameters. In addition, at certain disaster strength, the pre-disaster optimal procurement was greater than the after-disaster optimal purchases. In the end, this paper tested this conclusion in some examples.