Unmet NeedSupply chains include a series of steps when transporting products from manufacturers to patients. The supply chain management market will exceed $13 billion in software revenue by the end of 2017 and is expected to exceed $19 billion by 2021. HERMES (Highly Extensible Resource for Modeling Supply-chains) represents the flow of products from the manufacturer to the patient. Managing the safety and quality is vital to ensure the appropriate delivery of products and to mitigate risks. HERMES provides the user with a computational framework for modeling and optimizing supply chains.
Technology OverviewHERMES is a discrete-event simulation model of the processes, locations, equipment, and products involved in the supply chain. This technology will be able to model any supply chain structure and simulate any number of items, locations and transport methods. The user will input various details, such as storage locations, shipping routes, capacity, transport devices, ordering policies, product characteristics, and product demand, and HERMES will generate a supply chain simulation. The model represents every storage/delivery location, storage device, transport vehicle/device, worker, product, and product accessory in the supply chain. HERMES integrates a costing tool to translate the relevant measure into economic measures of interest (i.e. Cost per activity, location, dose administered).
Stage of DevelopmentThe source is licensed to the public under AGPL v3 open-source license. The development of the model is ongoing. HERMES has been used to develop vaccine supply chains in Niger, Benin, Senegal, Thailand, and Vietnam.
PublicationsPlosOne. 8(5): e64303. Vaccine. 31(26):2828-34.J Public Health Manag Pract. 19(0 2): S65–S67.Vaccine. 31(45):5232-5238.Vaccine. 30(30).4517-4523.Vaccine, 30(38):5637-43.American J Public Health 102(2):269-76.
