SOURCING & LOGISTICS Photo by Jordan Porter-Woodruff
1st Row – Lizbeth Estrada, Nancy Olmos, Raekwon Castillo, Gisselle Morales and Dan Schumacher
2nd Row – Carmen Mendoza, Vella Stevanovic, John Pena, Arpan Pradhan, Matt Gacek, Kwelan Kato, Damian Hatchett, and Greg Skelly 3rd Row – Allison Ross, Deona Hasimllari, Atanas Ilchev, Grace Sperr, Anurag Jaiswal, and Dinesh Gopalakrishnan 4th Row – Jordan Schleyer, Robbie Brown, John Mayer, Michael Kim, Osvaldo Torres, and Silas Fulcher 5th Row – Adrian Skrzypek, Matt Miguest, Eric Tritch and Ian O’Malley
easier. The metrics shared [for HPN’s annual award] were really around clinical supply stocking and inventory management, and the aggressive pursuit of 100% fi ll rates. However, we have sim- ilar metrics around contract cycle time, item add/supplier add cycle time, and value analysis requests. We need to be able to effectively execute our processes and get answers back to requestors to move initiatives forward to lower cost and improve outcomes.”
One of UCM Supply Chain’s notable accomplishments showed declining over- all stockout rates (slashed by 50%) while expanding service locations in the two years leading up to the pandemic. How did they do it? By identifying root causes and implementing basic but detailed counter- measures, according to Atanas Ilchev, system director, Supply Chain Operations & Logistics.
“Most of our KPI information is obtained
from our inventory management system, including stockout rate, stocking locations, and SKUs in each location,” Ilchev said. “KPIs are fundamental for understanding your performance and charting a course to achieve a target. Countermeasures are established daily [during] our huddle, and through root-causing we perform when we encounter issues. Thorough, fast, and effective root-causing is key to continuous improvement, and we are working with all Supply Chain members daily to be bet- ter at this.”
Attainable innovation
A healthcare organization striving to improve effi ciency and performance may at fi rst mobilize people before ultimately throwing as much technology into the mix as possible, particularly as budgets permit. Not UCM. Being part of a sizeable urban aca-
demic institution that may afford the ability to adopt and implement as many high-tech tools as possible, Tritch’s team
Operations team getting to know the new Moxi delivery robot by Diligent Robotics
hpnonline.com • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS • August 2023 7
approached this option with discretion and due diligence.
Rather than fully embrace the latest tech for everything, UCM applies three differ- ent tech types to three specifi c service line areas spanning more than 65,100 item loca- tions supported by 59 full-time equivalents (FTEs) – Med/Surg, which encompass tra- ditional inpatient supply room locations; OR, which involve operating room support for med/surg-type items, such as case pick- ing for preference cards; and Procedural, which support in-patient and outpatient procedures calling for high-dollar, spe- cialized and case-specifi c materials. Each area uses some combination of tech type, ranging from barcoding on the low-tech side, radiofrequency identifi cation (RFID)- enabled Kanban on the mid-tech side, and individual RFID tagging on the high-tech side, augmented by Tableau dashboards to enable comprehensive and compartmental- ized visual analysis.
UCM tracks and measures the bulk of med/surg inventory via Kanban with RFID tags for the majority and barcoding for the rest, accounting for nearly 70% of total inventory. They use Kanban with RFID for OR products, which accounts for 15% of total inventory, and for pro- cedural products, a blend of Kanban with RFID and full-on RFID tagging for the remainder.
RFID-tagged Kanban locations involve
systematically reordering of high-mov- ing, low-dollar items by scanning bin cards via RFID readers. Barcode scanners are used for point-of-use and other slow- er-moving consumption areas. RFID is used to track consumption of owned or consigned high-dollar and specialty items at a case level by lot and item number and expiration date.
UCM determines what type of inventory technology to use based on cost/benefi t analysis, according to Ilchev. “Although it provides item-level visi- bility to inventory levels and expiration detail, individually tagged RFID is very expensive to implement and maintain,” he said. “Therefore, its reserved for high-dol- lar items and items that require chain of custody information. For example, car- diac implants and tissues are managed this way. RFID-enabled two-bin Kanban is our preferred technology in all other cases. This system provides some visibility into inventory availability (full par/half par/stockout) and is employed in most of our supply rooms. This system is rela- tively cheaper to implement and maintain. Barcoding provides little to no visibility and is the cheapest to implement and main- tain. This is used mostly in point-of-use locations – like nurse servers or in-room OR cabinets.”
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