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Transportation management includes commercial motor vehicles such as cars, ships, vans, and trucks, as well as rail cars (Chopra & Meindl, 2016). Fleet management (FM) is a component of transportation management that gives due concerns to the work of vehicles in the supply chain management (SCM) pipeline (Kunz et al., 2015). A well-performing FM system in logistics activities may provide attributes like better logistics efficiency, reduced operation cost, and promote service quality (Elguero, 2018).
Several activities are involved in the FM of a certain organization. The major activities include maintenance & repair management, fuel management, vehicle routing & tracking management, driver management, and overall vehicle lifecycle management. However, giving attention to a single type of FM activity could result in a false generalization of the performance of a certain institution (Martinez & Wassenhove, 2012).
Public institutions face poor timing of vehicle maintenance, huge expenses for the fleet, and a shortage of vehicles serving the branches and health facilities (Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Agency [EPSA], 2015; Teketel, 2017). Weak vehicle spare part management, fuel monitoring systems, tracking technologies, and driver monitoring systems are challenges encountered by most organizations around the globe (Ampiah & Transport Section, 2018).
This study was conducted in the Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Agency (EPSA), which was first established in 1947. Currently, EPSA has a total of more than 200 vehicles serving the 19 branches and the seven clusters they are included in (EPSA, 2021). The agency provides both programs and revolving drug fund (RDF) health commodities (HCs) for public and private health facilities (United States Agency for International Development [USAID], 2015).
Preliminary discussions made with persons in the fleet area at EPSA depict that a large number of vehicles stay in the garage for more than a month due to the shortage of spare parts and the limited working capacity of the internal general service (GS) provider. Every month, 12 - 15% of the vehicles at EPSA go for repair and maintenance. This in turn resulted in complaints from EPSA branch officers, and health facilities since HCs were not delivered on time.
Reports also show that EPSA encounters aging fleets, large fleet expenses, lack of vehicle spare parts, low fleet standardization, excessive service delays, and a shortage of vehicles serving the branches and health facilities (EPSA, 2015; United Nations Development Program [UNDP], 2017). The number of health facilities is increasing from time to time which threatens the on-time delivery of HCs to the hubs and health facilities (EPSA, 2019a). The ultimate consequences of transportation problems are delay (EPSA, 2018; Monnerat et al., 2019), frequent stock out (Mudzteba, 2014) of HCs, and inefficient services. Given the above scenario, there were no empirical studies (to the knowledge of the researchers) conducted considering EPSA to examine what the FM practices look like and to determine the implication of the FM practice on fleet performance.
There are few studies conducted on FM (Mare, 2016) and this study would be motivational and contributory for researchers of the area. Most importantly, EPSA directorates could use the findings of the study for further service improvements. This study would figure out the FM practice, performance, associations between fleet practice and performance, and FM challenges of EPSA. Moreover, government policymakers would benefit from the outcomes of the research since it could assist them in considering the current policies towards the FM situations of public health sectors.