Supply Management (or Utilization)

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Hospital supply chains are complex. The hospital product line consists of high- and low-cost materials as well as perishable and durable goods that are consumed in large and small volumes. There are also highly critical and non-critical items.

As a result, hospital supply chains have to be designed so that they can handle products with all combinations of these various traits (highly critical, low volume, high cost, perishable goods). Effective supply management particularly of clinical preference products can make the difference between a hospital being profitable or losing money with their razor-thin margins.

In any business, a supply chain needs to be designed with respect to the strategy and the nature of the company’s business. Across hospitals, the strategy is consistent. To put it simply, a hospital’s strategy is to maximize patient care. The hospital supply chain enables this strategy by:

  • Ensuring product availability
  • Minimizing storage space
  • Maximizing patient care space
  • Reduce material handling time and costs for all medical staff (nurses, pharmacists, doctors)
  • Minimizing non-liquid assets (inventory)

How Thomas Group Can Help

Thomas Group understands the various materials management systems and can assist in any supply operations, including

  • Standard Supply Chain
  • Stockless Inventory Systems
  • Vendor Managed Inventories (VMI)
  • Consignment
  • Automated Point of Use (APU) Systems

To maximize client’s supply chain effectiveness, we manage all projects based on our proven Process Value Management™ (PVM®) methodology, an end-to-end process-focused, measurement-driven methodology that delivers real value to our clients. Key PVM components are:

  • Top-down, leadership-driven continuous improvement
  • Cross-functional process team problem-solving approach
  • Consistent drumbeat and hierarchical metrics for transparency and control
  • Identifies, prioritizes, aligns, and time-phases actions to deliver fast, barrier-free processes across the value chain
  • Initiatives and tool deployment enterprise-wide
  • Actions-in-process™ (AIPs®) management to balance improvement initiatives with sustaining activities
  • Change management skills

Application of this approach to business transformation allows clients to successfully implement and sustain transformation by:

  • Channeling resources to prioritized activities
  • Changing the appropriate business processes
  • Ensuring that the knowledge base is transferred