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 Covid-19 pandemic. While the frontline warriors have primarily been rightly under the spotlight, the efforts of so many other back-end professionals didn’t go completely unnoticed.
While each industry was pushed to adapt to different challenges, healthcare institutions were probably given the heaviest of all amongst responsibilities. Like many other associates, the supply chain teams faced the rising challenges with great gusto. Each challenge had its own key lessons. Here are a few such lessons worth sharing.
Material availability, supply
The consistent lockdowns created many supply challenges, making it difficult to procure material (Covid-specific drugs and medical consumables like masks, gloves, face-shields, PPE Kits, etc). Standard measures like having an optimal safety stock seemed insufficient during a time when the demand multiplied amid ever-evolving clinical protocols. Additionally, reaching out to and onboarding new suppliers per region and qualifying alternative material for use within a short time became necessary. This taught us that supply chain 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 an imbalance in the material mix of a hospital’s inventory, with regularly used drugs becoming slow-moving, and fresh demands getting generated. 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. The takeaway was that even a transactional supplier could get elevated to a strategic partner at times, so sound professional relationships are important.
Internal supply chains
With external supply depleting amid lockdowns, it became essential to 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 centralised 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 operation mechanisms. The lesson is that 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 also went up. Supply lead times for many life-saving devices like oxygen concentrators, ventilators, and associated monitors, pulse oximeters, specialised masks, etc. went up. Hospitals had to resort to a combination of renting/procuring this equipment at short notice, and accepting donations from various trusts and corporates. 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. The takeaway is that complete realignment of Capex budgets is possible and should be done with an eye on sustained needs.
Employee encouragement
Unlike supply chain management associates in the manufacturing or services industry who had the liberty of working from the comfort of their homes, those in Healthcare travelled to their work even during the worst times of the pandemic, battling mental insecurities while putting up a brave face every day. 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. Thus, regardless of business exigencies, employee encouragement remains a key deliverable for an organisation, to keep them motivated to perform.
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.
(The writer is a Chief Supply Chain Officer at a Bengaluru-based hospital chain)