Jakarta – 21 April 2020: To help the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB), the Indonesian government agency appointed to manage the COVID-19 pandemic,  IBM Indonesia today released a cloud-based application that will be located at https://logistikgugascovid19.org/. The app, which has been made available free of charge enables BNBP to monitor and track the distribution of medical goods for 3000 healthcare institutions across the nation.

The app, developed and hosted on IBM Cloud’s Platform as a Service (PaaS), provides web-enabled data analysis capabilities, needed to ensure easy management of stock levels. The app alerts BNPB when stocks run low and helps the agency prepare for contingencies and ensure essential medical goods are always available. The app also helps the agency save time and improve speed of distribution.

The COVID-19 has caused a major slide in supply chains globally. According to IBM Institute for Business Value report, “COVID-19 and Shattered Supply Chains,” supply chains should be dynamic, responsive and interconnected to an organization’s ecosystem and processes. This requires end-to-end visibility, real-time insights and decisive actions—particularly in escalating situations (https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/OVZ3GZRG). The pandemic has revealed the vulnerabilities and fragilities in global supply chains across most, if not all, sectors and industries including healthcare. Today, organizations are in reaction mode, focused strictly on maintaining supply and meeting customer needs, often through hands-on rigor and hard work. To improve resiliency, global supply chain can be strengthened by leveraging the power of AI and other emerging technologies that can help companies maintain business continuity amid disruption and uncertainty.

According to Tan Wijaya, President Director IBM Indonesia, “As the coronavirus causes uncertainty, we want to help the Government and BNPB to handle the logistical aspects of medical goods distribution and make more informed decisions. With that in mind, we felt  it was critical to develop this application and host it on IBM PaaS  as it quickly and easily enables the application and data to be managed anywhere; provides a unified approach across multiple deployments and is able to support mission critical workloads securely. These aspects are of tremendous help in the current situation”.

The distribution problem for medical goods is exacerbated during health crisis, triggered by factors such as epidemics or natural disasters, the scale of which cannot be predicted in advance. The process of manually tracking supply levels is not only inaccurate, but also tedious and time consuming. The opportunity cost is high, freeing up time and resource to dedicate for patient care. Historically, BNPB faced severe challenges in managing medical goods distribution, worsened by the lack of an efficient supply tracking tool. Indonesia’s sprawling archipelago and vast geography also poses a major challenge for the delivery of goods. This application benefits BNPB in terms of ability to access stock levels and movements to ensure the healthcare institutions receive the right quantity of stock; time efficiency-gains with the app reducing manual data tracking and paperwork as well as reduced synchronization errors as data is accessible in real-time.

Tan added, “What began just weeks ago with one conversation with BNPB has solidified quickly into an unprecedented effort that can make a real difference. 35 IBM Services team members came together to build a solution, and we hope with this app we will be able to help BNPB distribute the medical goods such as personal protective equipment (PPE) at speed to meet the critical needs of healthcare workers across the country who rely on the equipment to protect themselves and their patients.”

Yono Reksoprodjo, Head of Logistics for the voluntary team of BNPB said, “Logistics is one of the critical aspects to manage COVID-19. With the huge numbers of infected people across the country, it is not easy to run logistical operations without good system management tool. Many institutions and individuals are keen to donate directly, and without a proper tool we cannot do proper tracking and the donations are piling up in one location. We are happy with the support from IBM Indonesia team who have given their application for us to use and is expected to be made accessible to the public too. All in all, we truly hope that this pandemic will end soon.”

In a time of uncertainty, IBM will continue to work on technology and build on the years of expertise to drive meaningful progress in this global fight.  During the tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004, IBM developed and implemented SIMBA (Aceh Disaster Management System) for data consolidation and reporting on logistics to help Indonesian government with the disaster relief effort.

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Media Contact:

Rina Suryani – Communications Lead, IBM Indonesia

Phone: 0811 147534

Email: rinas@id.ibm.com