The Institute for Supply Chain Management has identified six trends that will affect your supply chain operations in the very near future, if they haven’t affected them already. These six trends are:
- Agility: Agility can be described in many ways, such as, speed, responsiveness, predictability, and thinking outside the box. Healthcare supply chain management competency isn’t about saving money and ensuring supplies’ availability any longer. As Chris Sawchuk, Principal, The Hackett Group, says, “It’s about how to be more predictive about what might happen in the future.”
- Talent Shortage: You are probably already seeing the “baby boomers” in your supply chain organization either retiring or planning for retirement in greater numbers than ever before. I recently read a survey that said that this number could represent 50% of current supply chain leadership. To prepare for this eventuality, Sarah Scudder of The Sourcing Group recommends:
- Setting up mentoring and buddy programs for knowledge transfer.
- Cross-training directors and other key managers so they get additional experience.
- Providing training programs so skills are not lost.
It is important that you heed this early warning so you aren’t caught losing your current brain trust of experience individuals and senior management.
- Trusted Advisors: Too often supply chain managers are considered support or service staff, but these labels are changing for the better. Your customers are now looking to you to be a trusted advisor or one who is considered to have great ability, strength, and truthfulness. It is now time for supply chain professionals to fulfill this new role across all silos to favorably influence more buying decisions.
- Solutions Architects: In addition to being a trusted advisor, your customers are also looking to you to find new ways of doing traditional things. It could be employing the internet to buy their supplies faster and cheaper, or using social media to discover new sources for their supplies. Whatever it is, your customers are looking to you for better solutions to their challenges.
- Innovation: As with being a solutions architect, your customers are looking for ground-breaking ways to accomplish things. Instead of a 1,2,3 or a methodical approach to their problems they are looking for more innovative solutions. For instance, maybe it is the use of Uber to deliver emergency supplies to them within an hour or outsource your mailroom for lower costs and better service.
- Technology: Supply chain has just tapped into the surface of innovation to enable it to provide seamless, transparent, and more cost-effective solutions for its customers. It’s now time for supply chain management to be even more technology-focused. For example, maybe it would be more efficient and cost effective to use a 3-D printer to manufacture in-house some orthopedic supplies or employ scanners to keep track of lost OR sponges.
These six mega-trends will change the way you do your supply chain business over the next few years, so it makes sense that you start moving in these directions before it becomes compulsory that you do. Remember, it is always better to decide to make a change and then make it yourself than to be told to do so by a higher up.