Designing global supply networks for conflict or disaster support: the case of the Canadian Armed Forces

In order to fulfill Canada’s international disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and peace enforcement roles, the Canadian Forces (CF) rely on a supply network to deploy and sustain its overseas missions. Warehousing, maintenance, transhipment and transportation activities are required to support missions. Currently, the CF supply network does not incorporate any permanent overseas depots. Since international needs and Canada’s roles have significantly evolved during the last decade, and given that supply network efficiency and robustness are critical for missions’ success, reengineering the CF supply network to consider the incorporation of permanent international prepositioning depots has become an important issue. This paper proposes an activity-based stochastic programming model to optimise the CF overseas supply network. It also shows how the model proposed can be used to improve the global reach of the CF.