Supply Chain Hall of Fame 2009 Recipients
The Bellwether League has just announced 13 supply chain pioneers that have entered their “Hall of Fame” this month. You might not know all of these honorees whom I have listed below who are the recipients of Bellwether’s 2009 awards but I thought I would talk about one recipient who has impacted my career forever… Gordon A. Frieson.
The Honoree Class of 2009 includes George Ainsworth, Charles Auslander, Guy J. Clark, Gordon A. Friesen, Lillian R. Matiska, Brien Laing, William M. McKnight Jr., Sara I. Mobley, Paul B. Powell, Samuel G. Raudenbush, Warren Rhodes and James E. Stover. These 12 were chosen for their intellectual and operational contributions to healthcare through their achievements in hospitals, group purchasing organizations (GPOs), manufacturers and distributors, consulting firms, educational institutions and media properties
When I was a young MM I was hired as Director of Materials Management for a community hospital that was building a new hospital based on the design concepts of Gordon A. Frieson. It was my job to operationalize the Frieson supply chain concepts (nurse servers, exchange carts, supply technicians on nursing floors, SPD, case carts, etc.) into our new building program. The only problem was I had never heard of Gordon Frieson and was only tangentially familiar with his supply chain concepts.
Fast forward one year! After a year of researching “The Frieson Way” of doing things (reading articles, visiting other Frieson hospitals and good old trial and error), my staff and I put in place all of Frieson concepts into a integral supply chain operational plan, which we then implemented over a six-month period. The lesson I learned from this exercise was that if you systematic plan for any project you can be successful even if at the starting point you know little or nothing about the subject matter at hand.
The second thing that I learned from this experience was that if you borrow the best ideas, as Frieson did, from other industries such as airlines, hotels and manufacturing, you can greatly improve your efficiency and effectiveness by “stealing from the best with pride” as Tom Peters used to say.
Lastly, I learned that by adopting the best practices from the disciplines of management engineering, space planning and logistics into my new Frieson supply chain model, that I could dramatically reduce my hospital’s nursing cost by transferring all non-nursing duties to supply chain management.
And that’s not all! This big and challenging learning experience set me on a career path to incorporate “The Frieson Way” of doing things at every hospital, system and IDN where I was employed going forward with great success.
So as you can see, this pioneer in supply chain logistics rightly deserves to be in the Bellwether League’s Hall of Fame because in my opinion he changed the face of supply chain management for all that followed him into this important and rewarding work.
Supply Chain Hall of Fame Awards Now a Reality
I’ve talked about the “Supply Chain Hall of Fame” Awards before in this blog, but now they are a reality. The first honorees were presented their awards on October 21st at the Renaissance Chicago O’Hare Suites Hotel. As you may remember, this award was given the first time by the Bellwether League to supply chain leaders, futurist and educators of the past and present who have made their mark on our industry.
Supply Chain Hall of Fame Honorees
The honorees were the late Dean S. Ammer, Ph.D., Lee C. Boergadine, Gene D. Burton, Charles E. Housley, Thomas W. Kelly, William J. McFaul, Tom Pirelli, Donald J. Siegle and Alex J. Vallas. All of the honorees weren’t present to receive their award, but here are some of the comments from the ones that did attend from a news release provided by the Bellwether League.
Lee C. Boergadine reflected on his career “from Peoria to here,” as characterized by (Jamie) Kowalski. He called his induction into Bellwether League “one of the most exciting and humbling evenings of my life, second only to the evening my wife Marty said ‘I do.’”
Boergadine then traced his professional and personal development as influenced by five of his fellow inductees. “There’s no more eloquent way to demonstrate what it is to be a bellwether than to be a young man in Central Illinois and have personal contact with my fellow honorees,” he concluded. “Thank you all for the part you played in my life.”
Kowalski recalled meeting with Burton for advice and how Burton gave him four-to-five hours of his time as a demonstration of Burton’s commitment to the profession. The retired Burton expressed appreciation for being able to see people he hasn’t seen in years, thanked Bellwether League and his former employers and employees during his career, and capped his brief comments by thanking his wife of 63 years who was seated in the audience, next to Suzan Logan, who leads his consulting firm Gene Burton & Associates Inc.
(Thomas) Kelly called it a “thrill” to receive Bellwether League’s award and a “capstone” to his career. “When I was a young buck getting started at GE, [a manager] told me there were four things you need for success: A good education (Kelly highlighted his Jesuit school in New York), work hard (he told audience members to ask his wife Mary in attendance about the dinners and parent-teacher conferences he missed), mentors (he cited two, his boss at Massachusetts General Hospital Randy McDonald and Bellwether League Board Member Tom Hughes) and you have to be lucky.”
As you can see, it was an emotional time for these awardees who started their supply chain careers just like all of us just wanting to make a difference. Well, these individuals sure did make a difference in how we in the healthcare supply chain management see our jobs today. Not as buyers, but as supply chain executives who manage multi-million dollar supply chain businesses that can make a big difference in our healthcare organization’s bottom line. Congratulation to these supply chain heroes for their contribution to our discipline.
