Today, we save lives. The University of Houston’s College of
Engineering presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created
them. Calories. We spend a lot of time trying to avoid them. But
for tens of millions of severely malnourished children, calories
mean the difference between life and death. In 2001, the
children’s emergency relief fund UNICEF entered a new era by
signing the first long term contract to buy RUTF — Ready-to-Use
Therapeutic Food. A sticky paste of peanuts, oil, sugar,
powdered milk, vitamins, and minerals, RUTF is packed full of
good calories. As demand for the product grew, UNICEF faced a
problem: how to get RUTF to emergency locations quickly,
inexpensively, and in sufficient quantity. It was a classic
problem in supply chain management, an area of study that’s
received a lot of attention in recent decades by engineering and
business schools. World leading manufacturers know it’s not
sufficient to simply build a better mousetrap