With this said, here’s three new industry ideas that will show you what’s ahead for healthcare supply chain management in the very near future:

1.                  Electronic Payments

Industry is way ahead of healthcare when it comes to paying their vendors electronically with no paper work involved. It generates bigger discounts for customers who agree to make faster payments to their vendors electronically. Everyone wins with this scenario!

2.                  Lifecycle Management (LM)

LM is all about scientifically managing of your products, services and technologies from birth to death (i.e. design, use, operate, maintain, support, sustain, phase-out, retire, recycle or disposal) to ensure maximum return-on-investment for any and all organizations. It’s just common sense to do so!

3.                  Demand Management

Demand management, or utilization management as we call it, is a supply chain operational area that we too have been focusing on for eight years. Its focus is on reducing the in-use cost of the products, services and technologies that any organization is buying by identifying waste and inefficiency in value streams, then eliminating them to realize better bottom line savings.

These are just three new industrial supply chain ideas that healthcare organizations can and should adopt to further enhance their supply chain management activities. They are tried, true and safe and have been proven to be best practices for industry for years. That’s what’s ahead for the healthcare supply chain of the future when and if you are ready to move to the next level of supply chain performance.