LLamasoft Supports Zipline to Improve Drone Performance for Public Health Supply Chains

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Ann Arbor-based LLamasoft, a global leader in supply chain optimization technology today announced a partnership with Zipline, a technology innovator that operates the world’s only national-scale drone delivery system.

Zipline, which uses drones, for example, to deliver medical supplies to remote villages in Africa, has been collaborating with LLamasoft to simulate their operations and quantify the cost and performance benefits their technology can bring to existing public health supply chains.

Based in California, Zipline has been operating in Rwanda since Oct. 2016 and is now expanding its services to Tanzania. LLamasoft has been analyzing Zipline’s operations in both countries and plans to operate four distribution centers, the first of which will be located in Dodoma, Tanzania’s capital. LLamasoft is currently working with Zipline to help design their Dodoma operations.

“As Zipline builds the agile supply chain of the future, LLamasoft’s expertise in supply chain modeling and optimization has been extremely valuable,” says Will Hetzler, co-founder of Zipline. “LLamasoft is widely respected in the global health community, and they already worked to optimize portions of the public health supply chains in many of the countries where Zipline plans to operate. LLamasoft’s familiarity and credibility with these health systems has helped Zipline communicate the value of our services.”

LLamasoft’s global impact team has worked with the Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Medical Stores Department on other supply chain projects in recent years, including a transportation optimization project and a strategic review of their supply chain. LLamasoft will draw on this experience to help Zipline maximize the benefits of their integration into the Tanzanian public health supply chain.

Both companies plan to continue the collaboration as the adoption of the technology continues to grow.