Master Anaplanner Hack-a-Thon & The Bay Area Cotton Masks Group
“All-in” attitude shines through during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anya of Allitix, is also a volunteer that helped to organize the Bay Area Cotton Masks group www.facebook.com/groups/SFBACM/about.
The Bay Are Cotton Masks is a non-profit Facebook-based volunteer group that attracts a few hundred volunteers who sew and deliver handmade cotton masks to the health care providers and the essential front-line workers. To date 2200+ masks have been delivered.
Logistics of this effort is a complex process. Anya and David Edwards (David Edward Consulting, LLC) developed an Anaplan Model for the Bay Area Cotton Masks Group and submitted it for the Master Anaplanner Hack-a-Thon. The model is designed to help the Bay Area Cotton Mask Group coordinate the efforts of 250+ volunteers by streamlining a highly manual and spreadsheet-intensive process of collecting donated supplies, redistribution of these to the sewing volunteers and subsequent management of the logistics to collect prepared mask kits, completed masks and delivery to the recipients.
The key functional areas addressed by the model include:
• Dashboards to review the donated materials inventory by type/location, identify available local volunteer drivers needed for drop-offs and pick-ups, make driver assignments and provide the drivers with the specifics.
• Dashboards to track mask kit preparation process, assess the available mask kits counts, facilitate the redistribution of kits to the sewing volunteers short of supplies by location/type of materials needed, track ending inventory and outstanding requests.
• Dashboards to report/review the requests from healthcare providers and other front-line workers, assess urgency, prioritize and keep track of requests’ fulfillment.
• Dashboards to track completed masks by drop off location, enable driver assignments by location for inventory consolidation and maintain tracking of masks’ current, expected and ending inventory.
Bay Area Cotton Masks community supports the front-line workers experiencing the shortage of PPE including healthcare providers, 911 responders, paramedics, staff of assisted living facilities staff, doctors and nurses of ICU/ER units, pediatric/neonatal facilities, urgent care units and many other groups.
Community efforts and technology are coming together to illustrate how a versatile cloud platform can assist in managing the sophisticated logistical efforts of the hundreds volunteers.
Thank you Anya and Edward for putting together a real life Anaplan application example.
Most importantly, thank you, Bay Area Cotton Mask group volunteers and admins Anya, Shailaja and Nikki for stepping in to make a difference during the time of great challenges and stress for all, and to help those who protect all of us and need our support the most.
