SOURCING & LOGISTICS Sponsored by
Chain reactions
GOLD CHAIN:
UChicago Medicine, Chicago, IL Highlights: Modeling demonstrates a thor- ough understanding of customer service, clin- ical alignment and integration, fi nancial and operational actions and strategic planning, successful relationships with suppliers, and comprehensive support of employees through career channels, engagement, and profes- sional development. They craftily manage the delicate balance between people, process, and technology with an emphasis on human assets over anything else. Using data, dash- boards, LEAN, and other methodologies, keep a fi nger on the pulse of all things supply chain to continually improve. Direct line-of-sight goals with departmental leadership bene- fi ts their organizational goals. Their Process Transformation Team concept represents an innovative approach that enables others to do specifi c tasks while leaders in the control tower send signals based on assessments to assure optimal service levels.
SILVER CHAIN:
Hartford HealthCare, Hartford, CT Highlights: Leveraging clinical integration to provide a key foundation for their innovative practices while establishing a Supply Chain Concierge Team to elevate customer service represents an intriguing strategy and an eff ec- tive tactic. Demand planning and their syn- chronized working with suppliers around the globe have contributed to their resiliency as a leading supply chain operation. Their intense eff orts and focus on serving their community, and concentrating on diversity spend and sup- port, have yielded much-deserved recognition and renown.
BRONZE CHAIN:
MultiCare Health, Tacoma, WA Highlights: Implementing higher-end technol- ogy, including robotics and automation, only demonstrate and reinforce that this organi- zation is on the move in a trajectory that will fi rmly place them among the industry’s elite and progressive leaders. Their continuing progress in generating eight-digit annual savings, as well as making workfl ow improvements through an articulated and well-rounded strategic plan and a visually appealing and comprehensive work- stream approach, positions them to contend for diff erent-colored award chains within the next several years.
foreshadowing of the global crisis that would erupt in 2020. In the 10-year period between fi scal
2012 and fi scal 2020, UCM’s Supply Chain team quadrupled its annualized savings to nearly $20 million from less than $5 million, according to Tritch. They were particularly proud of a con- tinuous improvement project centered on bin optimization. The team sought to minimize the impact of a distributor line fee cost increase that was nearly double, decrease the total cost of ownership by increasing minimum order quantities to control labor requirements, and increase labor effi ciency by reducing the number of lines ordered daily.
The team collected data to best opti- mize bin space in each supply room, targeting the fastest-moving items in selected supply rooms. They also cre- ated a cloud-based system to collect data and validate bin sizes per supply room. Using the data, they proved their business case, phased in process changes system-wide, and they continue to audit to monitor progress, Boyden notes. Supply Chain’s Process Transfor ma- tion team designed and implemented the project, which lasted eight months, including proof of concept, pilot, and implementation, followed by a sus- tainment period. “The distributor provided product dimensions that we used to model what the future state would look like and the projected cost savings,” Boyden recalled. “This was very important in the proof-of-concept phase of the project.” He further clarifi ed, “This is not a sys- tem-based project, but a change in our inventory model/holding pattern based on the total cost of ownership (TCO), and this process can be replicated using the TCO principle in any facility.” Supply Chain was measuring the specifi c outcome over a period of inter- vention around moving from a “lowest unit of measure” and “minimal inven- tory” mindset to an “optimal” unit of measure and inventory mindset, accord- ing to Tritch. “We didn’t want to have high turns
just for the sake of high turns, but really look at when and why we need to order and create extra touches within the sup- ply chain, balancing the trade-offs of extra inventory with labor costs and stockout risks,” he continued. The proj- ect phase was completed in the spring of 2019, roughly seven months before the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. “We are lucky to have executed this initiative prior to the pandemic or we would have been in a much worse
12 August 2023 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS •
hpnonline.com
Non-Clinical Strategic Sourcing Team - Robbie Brown - Asst Director, Allison Ross -Sourcing
Category Leader, Deona Hasimllari - Sourcing Category Leader, Osvaldo Torres- Director Strategic Sourcing
position, as we generally are a low-unit- of-measure/just-in-time [JIT] operation, so we have less safety stock inventory than a lot of operations,” Tritch said. “However, we’ve pivoted our strategy around both on-site and off-site safety stock and disrup- tion management, and have partnered with Cardinal Health to be thoughtful and stra- tegic about how and where we keep critical inventory to manage through supply dis- ruptions. We’ve seen steady improvement in fi ll rates, but there are still hundreds of items on disruption daily that the team works on better managing to reduce impact and cost on our operations.” Tritch acknowledges their efforts remain a success-in-progress.
“Osvaldo [Torres, director, Strategic Sourcing Non-Clinical] and Robbie [Brown, assistant director, Strategic Sourcing Non- Clinical] have done a tremendous job in the last two-to-three years building trust with all areas of non-labor expense to help con- tinue the positive trajectory of annual sav- ings. IT, Revenue Cycle, Legal, Facilities, HR, Strategy, you name it, we are a trusted partner working with them on supplier strategy and spend management. These partnerships have helped lead to creative approaches towards contracting and value creation that have driven savings in key purchased services categories.” Brown looks ahead with promise. “When we think about future opportuni-
ties within the services expenses, our team is focused on continuing to work with key department leaders to leverage recent con- solidations of major enterprise applications as an opportunity for us to look at ancillary applications that were either redundant or can be decommissioned, along with our projected system growth as an opportu- nity for partners to deliver value propo- sitions that can provide sustained value over time,” he noted. “Our team has also recently implemented more rigor around purchased services governance that, com- bined with the strong partnerships that we have established with our department stakeholders, will help identify new sav- ings opportunities.” HPN
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