At a professional networking event recently, I was glad when someone walked up to me to acknowledge the role played by Supply Chain professionals during the Covid19 pandemic. While the frontline warriors - doctors, nurses, other hospital staff – have primarily been under the spotlight, and rightly so, it was heartening to note that the efforts of so many other back-end professionals hadn’t gone completely unnoticed. They were the ones working equally hard, and mostly behind the scenes 24X7 to ensure the frontline workmen always had access to the materials, tools, devices, and medical equipment required to overcome the largest challenge they had faced in their lifetimes.
While each industry was pushed to adapt to different challenges, healthcare institutions were probably given the heaviest of all amongst responsibilities - that of pulling their respective nations out of the deadliest pandemics the world had seen in over 100 years. Like many other associates, the Supply Chain teams too faced the rising challenges the pandemic had brought, with great gusto. Each challenge also came with key lessons, and these never-say-die heroes learned those lessons on the fly while continuing to deal with executing the enormous job on hand. Here are a few such lessons worth sharing.
Material Availability and Supply
The consistent lockdowns throughout the world created many supply challenges, making it difficult to procure material (Covid-specific drugs and medical consumables like masks, gloves, face-shields, PPE Kits, etc.). While standard measures like having an optimal safety stock would have sufficed in normal circumstances, these seemed insufficient during a time when the normative demand for these SKUs had multiplied manifold, amid ever-evolving clinical protocols. Securing larger volumes proactively with suppliers using early-warning mechanisms helped to an extent. Additionally, reaching out to and onboarding new suppliers per region and qualifying alternative material for use within a short time, became necessary.
Lesson learned: Supply Chain safety mechanisms need to be dynamic to support changing needs.
Supplier Relationships
Amid the pandemic, the profile of incoming patients completely changed – while people with Covid symptoms increased dramatically, many others chose to stay at home postponing non-Covid care. This created a severe imbalance in the material mix of a hospital’s inventory, with regularly used drugs becoming slow-moving, and fresh demands getting generated for SKUs that usually are the non/slow-moving ones. Relationships with supplier partners came to the rescue here – simple things like not enforcing the contractual non-moving material-return clause, or clearing supplier payment dues during these trying times, created a win-win situation for both sides.
Lesson learned: Even a transactional supplier could get elevated to a strategic partner at times, so sound professional relationships with all are important.
Internal Supply Chain Alignments
With external supply depleting as the nation went into successive lockdowns, it became essential to also look internally to support material needs, by rationing and sharing common items amongst Units. When the task at hand is to ensure the second-largest hospitals’ network in the country has no material availability issues, and that each of the 27 hospitals continues to follow a uniform way of working within SCM, the team re-pivoted the centralized management of the Supply Chain a bit. Additional (and temporary) Regional Supply Hubs were created within the network to manage the geographical diversity, with focused teams and op-mechs identified to manage the material flow between Units.
Lesson learned: While Supply Chain agility remains paramount, an inward focus is also desirable in managing external exigencies.
Capital Expenditure
Along with drugs, the need for equipment in treating COVID too went up. Supply lead times for many life-saving devices like oxygen concentrators, ventilators, and associated monitors, pulse oximeters, specialized masks, etc. went up. Hospitals had to resort to a combination of renting/procuring this equipment at short notice, and graciously accepting these as donations from various Trusts & Corporates who actively came forward to support. Knowing that many of these augmentations could be overkill after Covid wanes, all capital expenditure had to be done in a manner that optimally balanced the short- and long-term requirements.
Lesson learned: Complete realignment of Capex Budgets is possible and should be done with an eye on sustained needs.
Employee Encouragement
Unlike SCM associates in the Manufacturing or Services industry who had the liberty of working from the comfort of their homes, the SCM associates in Healthcare travelled daily to their work even during the worst times of the pandemic. In this endeavor, they had to battle not only their own mental insecurities but also that of their loved ones, while putting up a brave face every single day. Though largely a thankless job, they still had to plod on. This aspect is probably self-explanatory and doesn’t need much elaboration, but ensuring both material and moral support to these warriors while keeping them engaged, helped overcome many of these challenges.
Lesson learned: Regardless of business exigencies, employee encouragement remains a key deliverable for an organization, helping them remain motivated to perform at their best.
While these lessons have been articulated from a Healthcare standpoint, I am sure many of these are domain-agnostic and can be horizontally deployed across industries.
