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it significantly reduces the investment required to centralize operations and strengthens the case for consolidation,” she said. “When you think about all the possibilities for centralization and con- solidation of distribution and manage- ment of shared services, the question is no longer simply, ‘What does the warehouse of the future look like?’ The question becomes, ‘What can the hospital of the future accomplish thanks to innovation in supply chain management?’”


Shakedown breakdowns In cases of backorders, breakdowns, out- ages and shortages, Tessa Natterer, Direc- tor, Supplier Performance, PartsSource Inc., recom- mends looking outside the box. “Healthcare supply


chain leaders fear critical item shortages and back orders, an increasingly common problem with clinical supplies,” she said. “Clinical engineers face the same challenge as it relates to back-ordered and slow-to-ship parts and service that takes months to schedule. These challenges lead to delays in equipment repair, lost revenue, waiting patients and idle CE staff. Instead, if resources were limitless, building the artificial intelligence to pre- dict and automate your ordering would dictate warehouse size and design specific to your facility’s patient requirements.” And if a healthcare organization cannot achieve such AI service itself it can look to a third party serving as a warehouse extension, Natterer continued. “Based on millions of transactions made by hundreds of hospitals, we leveraged ag- gregate data from CE teams to determine which mission-critical replacement parts are often out of stock or have long lead times to ship,” she noted. “The identified critical products are now guaranteed in-stock at our warehouse, ready for prompt shipment to members of the PartsSource Pro community, saving hos- pitals significant stock out or backorder days, but not adding to their warehouse requirements.” Because operating rooms, no matter


Tessa Natterer


how technologically advanced they may be, require sterile storage support, they should consider automated vertical storage equipment to help them “make maximum use of minimal space” and “to protect sterile supplies from the possibility of contamination,” insisted Amy Flynn,


OR/CS Market Manager, Hänel Storage Systems. Hänel’s sterile storage inventory management systems not only improve accuracy to more than 99 percent, but also reduce the likelihood of short- ages, expired items, having to spend valuable time to correct errors, and hav- ing to spend time searching for items urgently needed in the OR, Flynn noted. “The Hänel Rotomat has been proven to boost productivity due to increased ef- ficiencies in supply retrieval, streamline operations by lowering the need for a large staff, increase inventory security by storing expensive implants and supplies within a secure six-sided unit, provide additional security by requiring password access or keycard swipe in order to obtain supplies, improve ergonomics by keeping movement within the OSHA-suggested ‘golden zone’ between the waist and mid- chest height, and mitigate infection rates by keeping sterilized supplies within a closed environment.” Flynn doesn’t recommend hospitals adding a roomful of individual compart- ment racks as their storage solution. “These racks allow sterile supplies to be organized into removable plastic compart- ments, but the baskets often fall out of their tracks,” she said. “The bottom of one compartment often drops into the open top of the one below it, or a bin may have multiple types of items in it, so organiza- tion can very easily give way to chaos. Even though these racks have wheels, the combined weight of all the items on board makes it difficult to roll, and someone still needs to access items by moving outside the golden zone to do so.”


Amy Flynn


Minding maturity Deep pockets should take a back seat to efficient and intelligent use of resources, advises Carlo Malaguti, M.Arch., Senior Supply Chain Applications Specialist, Warehouse Design, TECSYS. “Every warehouse and


storeroom should be viewed as a queuing sys- tem where products re- ceived join a queue (stored) and are waiting to be ser- viced (shipped or used),” Malaguti observed. “The holy grail of that queue is when technol- ogy, time (labor) and space (storage) are synchronized so perfectly that inbound and


Carlo Malaguti


Storeroom/Warehouse (re)design: Man versus or with machine? https://hpnonline.com/21117597


14 January 2020 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS • hpnonline.com


outbound flow at a constant rate. No matter how deep your pockets, that fundamental concept should guide you. “It is certainly an interesting thought exercise to imagine intelligent sortation, image-based dimensioning equipment, automatic de-stacking and sortation, automated storage and retrieval systems, robotized order picking, automated AGV loading, routing and stocking — the list goes on,” he continued. “Ultimately, though, we ought to think about diminish- ing returns on the technology we imple- ment, both financially and logistically.” Malaguti recommends investing in


Auto-ID technology that connects a fa- cility’s inventory to its storage facility. This strategy extends beyond what he calls a “well-oiled software platform and appropriate use of data capture technolo- gies” to create a “network of datapoints to tap into the purest form of continuous improvement. Malaguti further emphasizes the need


for standards-based tracking and tracing processes. “Devices, equipment and products need


to be tracked using supply data standards, and a new generation of disposable, wire- less microchip can satisfy that requirement and then some,” he said. “Other than [identifying] every single item/[unit of measure] and carrying a huge volume of data, these microchips can also communi- cate temperature, ‘smell’ the surrounding, register shocks and unwanted movements, or confirm location within the supply chain when interacting with wireless lo- cators. The microchip can be inserted by the manufacturer, programmed based on requirements of the customer, and have the capacity to capture and transmit infor- mation until it reaches its final consump- tion point, including recycling or waste disposal data for statistical purposes.” HPN


There’s a lot more to the story:


Dear Santa Storage, this is what I want… https://hpnonline.com/21117592


Budget-based storage design/redesign doesn’t have to be cost-confining https://hpnonline.com/21117594


But here’s what really happens based on resources…


https://hpnonline.com/21117594


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