7 Strategies to Optimize Your Medical Equipment Supply Chain!

Medical Equipment Supply Chain

In any business, supply plays an important role. It ensures you dispose of your manufactured goods to your ideal customers. It’s the only way to get output from your investments in the production process. Based on this, an efficient supply chain is a must-have, despite the industry. Suppose you’re in the medical equipment business.

How can you optimize your medical equipment supply chain?

Here are some strategies you can adopt:

1. Improve Supplier Relationships

Suppliers are major stakeholders in the supply chain. Mishaps on their side could bring about many inefficiencies. One aspect that determines the quality of services you’ll get from suppliers is the working relationship. This relationship also depicts how fast you’ll get your goods to the market and how much you’ll spend on the process. 

Improve the supplier relationship by actively communicating with them. It doesn’t have to be only formal—informal communication is also crucial. Also, create a good rapport by meeting your end of the bargain regarding agreements. 

Pricing is a factor that’s been mentioned previously. As part of the optimization, source your medical supplies online from companies like CIA Medical that supply medical equipment in wholesale. Wholesale buying greatly reduces costs, availing more for your operations.

It’d help to evaluate your current supplier relationships and identify the bottlenecks. Do this while including the said suppliers. You’ll identify issues from both ends, improving the relationship. A good working relationship will ensure efficiency in the supply chain.

2. Adopt The Latest Technology

Technology aims to bring efficiency where it’s in use. Therefore, its use in your supply chain betters service provision. It’d help to assess the current tools you’re using. Are they meeting all your supply needs? What’s lacking? Are there tools that can meet the lacking needs of your supply chain? The answers to these questions will help you identify the tools to optimize your medical equipment supply chain.

As you adopt these tools, factor in finances. Don’t spend a fortune on technology; you have other supply chain operations to fund. Consider updating your existing tools instead of replacing them where finances are limited. In most cases, the latter is more expensive than the former. 

3. Work Based On Demand

One of the inefficiencies of the supply chain is poor stock movement. You’ll find equipment staying in the warehouse for several months without selling. It’s a waste of resources. 

The ideal solution is to work based on demand. It means only manufacturing and supplying what the medical market needs. It’d help to use historical supply records to pinpoint the medical equipment that’s always in high demand. Ensure the records are those in the recent past. You want to avoid relying on false statistics; it can put you off track.

As you check previous records, identify the factors surrounding the rising or lowering demand for a given medical equipment. This insight allows you to assess the market for the factors and know the best medical equipment to supply at a given time. 

Working based on demand will work best by having a team look into the equipment on demand at a given period. Alternatively, hold regular meetings where stock movement is the main agenda. 

4. Constantly Evaluate Your Supply Chain

One of the things that negatively affect the supply chain is doing the same thing constantly and expecting different results. Based on this, it’s crucial to evaluate your supply chain. Scrutinize each operation, identifying the areas that aren’t working. Your team could help you identify these issues and the bottlenecks they’re facing as they work.

For constant improvement, it’s best to review monthly or quarterly. It’ll ensure you’re always on your toes and not working the wrong way for a long time. It increases inefficiencies that could cost your business. 

Also, set key performance indicators (KPIs). They’ll help guide the monitoring and evaluation process. It’s best to set the KPIs as quantifiable goals. Such are easy to work with instead of having relative comparisons, like good or bad. 

5. Work With Trained Personnel

There are many parties involved in the supply chain of your medical equipment. For overall success, it’s best to work with qualified parties. Qualified personnel will work efficiently without errors—they know what they’re doing. 

In the supply chain, these parties include but aren’t limited to warehouse operators, fleet drivers, equipment operators, and supply companies. Warehouse operators should know how to retrieve goods quickly while drivers should have high-level driving skills. For instance, they should know how to maneuver traffic and supply medical equipment to the client within the agreed timeframe.

Lastly, the forklift operator should know how to quickly move goods from one location to another in the warehouse within the shortest time possible. They should do this without causing accidents or interfering with the work of other workers.

It’d help to check the qualification credentials of those you hire. Ensure they’re legitimate. Also, consider training your team regularly. It’ll perfect their skills and keep them on their toes. 

6. Organize Your Warehouse

There’s a high likelihood you have a warehouse where you store medical equipment before supplying them to the market. Warehouse operations are one of the causes of delays in the supply chain, especially due to a lack of organization.

An organized warehouse ensures the faster retrieval of equipment for orders and better inventory management. Organize your warehouse by adopting a shelving system. Use the first in, first out principle when retrieving goods from the shelves. It’ll also help arrange fast-moving equipment at the front of the shelves and slow-moving ones at the back.

Label your warehouse and shelves to easily identify medical equipment during order processing. It betters the product-handling process.

7. Operate With Policies And Procedures

Policies and procedures are laws and regulations for conducting given tasks, including behavior. They act as a guiding principle and help you easily optimize your medical equipment supply chain. These policies ensure everyone knows what’s expected of them in the supply chain. There’ll be minimal to no need for active monitoring of operations. 

The ideal way to formulate supply chain policies and procedures is by outlining each activity. Pinpoint the practices that could optimize each of these activities. All these will form part of your policies and procedures.

It’s best to let everyone know of the existence of the policies and procedures. Also, emphasize the consequences of a lack of adherence. Doing so increases the chances of their success.

Conclusion

Optimizing your medical equipment supply chain is all about ensuring workers execute each activity with the utmost efficiency. The discussion above details more on what to do for further optimization. Use this guide as you aim to improve your supply chain.

Medical Equipment Supply Chain article and permission to publish here provided by Claire Glassman. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on March 6, 2023.