What Fuels Long-Term Supply Chain Success?
The lessons of supply chain management of yesterday no longer hold true. To secure lasting supply chain success, today’s supply chain professionals must become more strategic vs. episodic in everything they do.
This statement implies that in everything you are doing right now or thinking about doing for the future you must take a long-term view of how it aligns with your hospital, system or IDN’s long-term goals. Those goals are fueled by the uncertainty of the healthcare marketplace in the 21st Century.
As an illustration, I’m seeing healthcare systems and even Alliances centralizing some or all of their financial services (payables, credit and collection, accounting, credit and collections, etc.) under their corporate umbrella to dramatically reduce their overhead cost. More than a few healthcare systems are replicating the WalMart model by vertically integrating all of their supply, processing and distribution operations as separate and free-standing new business entities.
These are long-term trends that have short-term implications for supply chain professionals who must start thinking and planning to move in this new and better strategic direction. For instance, if you are planning to upgrade and expand your current warehouse, as one of our clients is considering doing, you might want to think about building a shared services off-site warehouse with other hospitals in your region. This way you will be following the long-term trend of vertical integration today instead of locking yourself into a short-term strategy of building your own warehouse and absorbing all of these costs yourself.
To summarize, what fuels the long-term supply chain management success is to always be looking over the horizon at the trends that are emerging in our marketplace, and then incorporate these lessons into your own strategic planning process so you are always thinking short-term with the long-term in mind.
