Health supply chain in Ethiopia
Description
Logistics as a business function plays important role in organization’s performance through the planning, implementation and control of processes linked to pharmaceuticals and medical equipment’s, material, information and financial flows. The main objective of this study was to assess the relationship between logistics management practices and organization performance in the case of Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency with respect to logistics management practices of Customer service, warehouse management, inventory management, fleet management, information flow management and supply management. Descriptive and explanatory research designs as well as quantitative research approach were employed in conducting the study. The population of the study was employees of Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency at central level working in warehouse, procurement, fleet management, inventory management departments from which the sample was drawn. Stratified random sampling was used to select the appropriate sample of the study. Data was collected using questionnaires and analysed using SPSS. Descriptive analysis namely percentage, mean and standard deviation; and inferential analysis namely Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression were employed. The study indicated that logistics management practiced very often in Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency. The study revealed that logistics management practice contributed to Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency organizational performance to a great extent. The study also showed that there was significant relationship between logistics management practices and organizational performance of Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency. The study further revealed that customer service practices, supply management practices, warehouse management practices, fleet management practices had predicting power on organizational performance of Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency. The study also revealed that Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency faced logistics management challenges to a great extent. The study recommended to enhance the logistics management practices as well as to deal with government bodies and balance level of logistics service and cost.
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The study examines the relationship of logistics management practices on organizational performance of Ethiopian pharmaceuticals supply Agency. Thus, descriptive and explanatory research designs were employed to conduct the study. The study used quantitative research approach to quantify the problem by way of generating numerical data or data that can be transformed into usable statistics and relies responses to pre-formulated questions. Descriptive research studies are those studies which are concerned with describing the characteristics of a particular individual, or of a group. Therefore, in order to accurately describe the relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable descriptive research study were employed. Also to quantify the problem by way of generating numerical data or data that can be transformed into usable statistics and responses to pre-formulated questions, descriptive research design have been used in the study In this study, the population elements are employees of warehouse and inventory management, procurement (tender and contract management directorates), fleet and distribution management ,quantification and market shaping , quality control directorate employees working in the central EPSA. These working units are organized under bound and out bound division, and they are directly responsible for the logistics activity of the Agency. The total number of employees in these working units is 311 based on employee assignment profile taken from human resource management and development directorate archive. The researcher used stratified random sampling method from probability sampling technique to select respondents from the target population. If a population from which a sample is to be drawn does not constitute a homogeneous group, stratified sampling technique is generally applied to obtain a representative sample. Under stratified sampling the population is divided into several sub-populations that are individually more homogeneous than the total population (the different sub-populations are called ‘strata’) and then items selected from each stratum to constitute a sample. Since each stratum is more homogeneous than the total population, stratified random sampling enable to get more precise estimates for each stratum and by estimating more accurately each of the component parts, it gives a better estimate of the whole. As the target population (employees of Ethiopian pharmaceutical supply Agency, central ) are in different working units (Quantification and Market Shaping, Tender management (Procurement), Contract management (Procurement), Program Fund, Revolving drug Fund, Laboratory Quality and Control , Warehouse and Inventory Management, Capacity Building and Operational Research, Distribution and Fleet Management. It is more appropriate to use stratified random sampling to draw representative from all working units (strata).