2013-05-08: Adama Hub Field Visit

Date

Wednesday-Thursday, 08-09 May 2013

Goals

Introduce Yared Ayalew to commodity-movement processes in the hubs

Discussion Items

Interviews took place over two days:

Day 1 (am): Initial meeting with Ato Alemahyu, with all participants present, and covered the following agenda items:
- Explanation of the Conflict of Interest problems that caused the sudden stop to the field-test, and the 10-month delay in development. Emphasis was placed on the fact this was outside the control of both WFP and DRMFSS, and was die to WFP ensuring proper procurement practices were followed.
- Introduction of Yared, and an explanation of his role in the project and how he will be preforming the same function as Elias Muluneh from the first phase
- Brief discussion of the upcoming Launch Workshop to be held in the first week of June
- Main focus of the meeting was on introducing the hub operations to Yared

Day 1 (pm): Tour of the Adama hub stores, looking at both food and NFIs and the supporting documentation. No operations were being conducted, so this could not be witnessed.

Day 2 (am): Detailed hub office interviews
- Dispatching recording interviews with Yohannes
- Receiving recording interviews with Selamawit

Hub Size

The hub has 20 stores of 5,000 MT each used for storage of DRMFSS commodities for a total of 100,000 MT. Of these, 4 have been given to EFSRA, and an additional 3 are on loan to them. If additional storage is needed, outside storage can be rented. Currently 2 external storage sites are being rented.

There are 10 additional Kespan stores of 500MT each used for storage of NFIs total capacity of 5,000MT.

Incoming Stock

Stock may be received from a number of donors. Primary donor is WFP (>90%)

Food Commodity Source

The hub receives food commodities from:

Djibouti port (WFP donation)
Local Purchase (DRMFSS purchase funded by WFP)
Barbara (not often)

Note: All WFP commodities come directly to the DRMFSS Hub. If the quality checks fail, the goods are stored on the DRMFSS site and treated directly at WFP cost.

NOTE: EFSRA sends infested/damaged food back to WFP as it acts as a bank.

Food Commodity Quality checks

Djiboutu Port Source: WFP usually informs prior to arrival if there are problems. Random quality control is still tested on entry to hub.

Local Purchase: Every truck is tested (pests and moisture)

Non-Food Items Sources

The hub receives non-food commodities from:

Direct donation (UNICEF, other bodies)
Local purchase
Public appeal (seldom, and disaster dependant)

Non-Food Item quality checks

Comparison against specifications where relevant.

Outgoing Stock

Service Area

The hub serves xx regions:

Oromia, excluding east Harage
SNNP (all)
Gambela (All)
Benshangul (all)
Afar (zone 1 & 3)
Amhara (one zone, rare)

Programmes

The hub supplies multiple programmes:

Relief (Cereal, CSB, Pulse, Oil)
PSNP (Cereal)
IDPs (as needed)

Operations Summary

This hub supplies a large number of regions/zones, and is a main transfer point from Djibouti to the other two hubs if those two hubs do not have current storage space.

When the other hubs borrow from EFSRA (can only be cereal as EFSRA stores nothing else (but wheat with wheat, maize with maize – rarely wheat with maize etc. but with special permission. Normally must be exact same grain-type)), the Adama hub usually repays the load (called a Swap because location has changed). Remember that commodity out of EFSRA has no SI number.

Issues Encountered

No issues encountered

DRMFSS Commodity Movement Scenarios

No focus on specific commodity movement scenarios

WFP-DRMFSS Interaction Scenarios

No questions

Change Requests

CATS is currently pending restart of field test, so no change requests encountered.

Outstanding questions

No outstanding questions

Notes

Commodity types
- In addition to cereal/pulse/oil/CSB, additional food commodities (sugar, etc.) are received for non-relief, non-PSNP programmes. For CATS to be effective, all food commodities will need to be tracked, though the allocation and management of the non-relief, non-PSNP (NRNP) commodities will not be managed by CATS. The exact mechanism to do this will need further investigation:
  - Comparison of actual vs planned receipts
  - Comparison of actual vs planned dispatch
  - How is a dispatch triggered if CATS at federal level is not recording NRNP RRDs?

Programme types
- Additional programme type 'IDP'. Any others? How will this be handled at federal level? Allow RRDs for NRNP?

Legacy NFI
- What should be done with recording in CATS? To be excluded for the time being

Mekele situation (Kombolcha issue)
- EFSRA warehouse has been loaned to DRMFSS. Goods arrive direct from Adama hub and are dispatched direct to FDP. The storekeeper stays there, and does not return waybills, etc to 'home' hub of Kombolcha.
  - Should this be treated as a separate hub (ask Muluneh). If not, why not?
  - Presence of record-keeper (in addition to store-keeper) is unknown. Can the roles reside in 1 person?
  - Status of connectivity unknown
  - What is the level of activity – No. of recipts/dispatches per day/week? Commodities involved?
  - If not treated as a separate hub, what happens currently to record keeping?
  - If the records are not regularly entered in CATS, advantages of regional notification, real-time stock levels, AddisàHub communications - all don't work

Sheshemene/Sodo (Adama) & Warata (Kombolcha) – EFSRA stores
- Can have long-term operations, with storekeeper remaining there for more than 1 month
- No notification of dispatch (to region/wereda/FDP) can be sent, as CATS is not being updated in real time
- Is/can a record-keeper be present?
- Connectivity status?
- No real-time stock levels, meaning Addis can't use CATS to plan stock movements
- Faxing waybills to home Hub (Adama) not effective - can be 20 trucks x 4 commodities = 80 waybills per day, and physical sheets may mean cannot fax as a single stream. NOTE: If the fax machine is not working (likely) this is also not a viable option

Role of EW/Logistics in determining stock (Project Code) usage
- Currently, when an RRD is received, Logistics calls the hubs to determine which project codes to use. The request is that EW/Logistics determine which Project Codes to use and just tell the hubs.
- This won’t work with the Mekele/Sheshemene/Worata situation, as:
  - These sites do not update stock in real time
  - Connectivity is unknown so instructions may/may not be able to be sent
  - Record-keeper presence is unknown, so may be no-one to take Addis instructions to pass to store-keeper (how does this happen at the moment?)
  - Requires hubs to keep much more explicit track of stock status – if a commodity becomes infested, this will have to be recorded in CATS so that Addis doesn’t allocate the infested stock. Hubs must be able to ‘block’ stacks/commodities for a set period of time
  - Hubs need the ability to override the product code specified by Logistics, to better utilise stock (or minimise risk of damage by moving high-risk commodities first (leaking roof, nearby infestation, etc)

Stores
- How can we assist the hub office with providing better information to the store-keepers.
- Samples of the reports/documents that go from office to store now? Appears to be hand-written on the RRD, based on a morning meeting
- Explicit display of SI/product-code/stack? What other additional info can be provided from hub office to stores to assist?
- How to encourage store-keepers to start recording stack numbers on receipt/dispatch documents?

Annual stock-take (alias stock reconciliation)
- How does this physically take place?
- Samples of documents?
- CATS team needs to witness this at at least one hub (organise for 1 hamle?)
- What additional reports can CATS provide?
- Can CATS assist with the information from stores to office?

Transporter statistics
- Primary metric is a comparison of “dispatch date” in issue ticket to “receive date” on receive note.
- Remember! This metric can indicate either delays due to transporter and/or delays due to wereda officials not being present and/or some other (as yet unknown) factor.
  - Compare average time for a given transporter against average times against a given wereda to see where the issue is
  - Use the metric over time to develop average expected delivery times for a given wereda/FDP
  - Tracking of missing/damaged cargo against individual driver names? Against transport company?
  - Need to make sure that any early reporting is ‘draft’, and that DRMFSS understand the reports will require fine-tuning, and are based on unproved assumptions

Other outstanding Issues
- Loans & Swaps (between programmes, between hubs, between agencies, etc.)
- Repayments to EFSRA
- Repayments to WFP
- No pipeline unit!!!
- SMS component won’t work if there is no hub connectivity!
- Fax from Hub server depends on server specs & hub fax-line availability

Action Items