No matter the size of your healthcare organization or the extent of your supply chain staff you can rethink and refine what you have been doing to unleash your supply chain potential if and when you focus your supply chain efforts on minimizing waste, improving efficiency, and increasing your savings – beyond price.
We like to say that there is a “whole new world of savings that will open up for you” if you start to observe and analyze how your products, services, and technologies are employed in your healthcare organization as opposed to being fixated on the price at the pump. This is where your gold nuggets will be found – not in price!
Now that inflation has kicked-in on cotton, rubber, food, and fuel it is even more important to understand how your products, services, and technologies are actually employed at your healthcare organization, so you can come up with creative ways to reduce costs. For example, many hospitals are making menu changes (e.g. chopped broccoli vs. broccoli spears) to mitigate some of the food inflation they have been experiencing. Others are switching from latex gloves to nitrile gloves since the cost of latex has risen dramatically. One hospital system even changed all their printer defaults to century gothic font to save 30% on their ink usage.
This is the future of supply chain management: Tweaking, rethinking, and shrinking all of your supply chain expenses to the absolute minimum. At the same time, make everything you do more efficient, more productive, and easier for everyone that touches your supply chain functions and activities. That’s how you unleash your supply chain potential!