The past year’s challenges have shown the health care industry that there is always room for improvement within your supple chain strategies.
Read the three following building blocks of supply chain excellence to improve your own:
- Define your supply chain strategy
Some attributes include replenishment five days per week or fewer, also having operating room (OR) and cath labs on periodic automatic replacement (PAR) levels and managed by materials. Another attribute involves daily/weekly nursing communication on stockouts, back orders, fill rates, etc. PARs should also be located together for each unit rather than spread out across multiple locations. - Establish stocking location philosophy
One attribute involves bins built to hold proper stock levels and make them easily accessible. There should also be collaboration with nursing to build “correct” PARs and a logical unit of measure ordering. Regarding managing PAR levels, it’s helpful to have a process for adding/deleting items from PARs and updating PAR (min/max) levels. Finally have bins/labels color coded for product groups. - Implement (semi) automated replenishment system
Enforce a point-of-use system/kanban/other signal system with a two-day min/max logical unit of measure program. Customer groups should be defined and maintained for order separation. Another attribute for a replenishment system is using barcode-scannable bins with the use of handhelds.
To see more building blocks view our 5 key elements for supply chain excellence one-pager and more strategies on how to achieve supply chain optimization on our supply chain center.