An analysis of CARE Zimbabwe’s emergency response process flow in the Masvingo Province through Lean Six Sigma tools

Natural disasters affect people and their livelihoods daily in the world, posing a challenge to humanitarian organisations whose mandate is to ensure that disasters are responded to or mitigated through timely supply of relief aid. CARE Zimbabwe, one of the biggest humanitarian organisations operating in the Masvingo Province, faces difficulties in fulfilling its mandate. It takes the organisation a long time to start assisting those affected by disasters since its procurement, recruitment, and deployment processes are not streamlined. Gathering data from stakeholders, we conducted an in-depth case study to understand how these processes are currently working. We synthesised and analysed the data using process and quality management tools within a Lean Six Sigma framework, advancing recommendations on how CARE Zimbabwe could streamline these processes to improve its response time.