Standard lists

A standard list is a record of items needed to operate a project (or a mission as a whole), with no notion of quantity. Such lists consolidate discussions between projects, coordination and the cell on the needs.

The advantages of having standard lists are about clearly visualise the needs of a project/mission, facilitate order creation and saving time when it comes to anticipate the need for items not in the catalogue, meaning that through the list missions also ask MSF Supply to make those items available before the actual order comes.

Practical consequences of a well done standard list and forecast are that MSF Supply can plan ahead, i.e. identify suppliers, negotiate prices. As such availability can be secured, price and lead time be reduced.

Technically a standard list is a pre-requirement to prepare the forecasts, since you can forecast only items from the standard list. However standard lists and forecasts are optional, which means that purchases orders can be placed without having such documents.

The lists can be defined at project level or at mission level. Usually medical standard lists are defined at project level while logistic standard lists are defined at mission level.

In the Portal you add Standard List for projects relying (completely or partially) on international supply. Therefore no local codes will be added there.

Only for external clients: MSF Supply uses the standard lists as catalogue, hence out of the full catalogue clients are allowed to order just the items included in the standard list, which is created and managed by MSF Supply. Orders into codes not included in the list are managed as technical orders. If an external client requires an item that is not yet included in a standard list he can report it to MSF Supply who will do the necessary.