THE OBJECTIVE

• One of the largest, vertically integrated national healthcare providers

• Perform an assessment of key supply chain practices; including receiving, process workflows and inventory management practices

• Improve material services procedures throughout all medical facilities

• Identify consolidation opportunities to eliminate duplicate efforts

• Establish best-practice purchasing and inventory management methodologies

 

THE CHALLENGE

• Redundancy in receiving procedures

• Non-standard practices

• Lack of internal awareness of inventory level requirements

• Excessive staffing

• Costly outsourced inventory handling

 

THE SOLUTION

• Implemented flex staffing to improve productivity and instituted continuous improvement practices

• Converted the top 50 inventory items to the internal Distribution Center and eliminated outsourcing expenses

• Refined the Open-To-Buy purchasing process

• Reduced carton touch points and manual data entry to increase productivity at receiving facilities

• Established Centers Of Excellence at key receiving facilities to serve as exemplary training resources, which exercise and communicate best practices, innovation, and continuous improvement

• Implemented a defined attrition strategy to right-size staffing levels within the material services groups of local medical facilities

 

THE RESULTS

• $10M in first-year savings were identified in the receiving and inventory management areas. 

• Streamlined processes

• Increased efficiency and utilization

• Optimized inventory management

• Improved purchasing processes

• Standardized procedures

• Reduced non-productive inventory

• Reduced unnecessary duplicate efforts and overall labor spend