Healthcare Supply Chain Technology and Strategy

Strategic planning for distributors doesn't always involved forecasting for new products, but it should. Especially when technology and regulatory pressures tend to change the products you need to offer to be successful. But the traditional problem is how do I know what or how much to stock when I have never sold it before.  Using a combination of analytics and some deep thinking we can arrive at some conclusions, it's not magic its just good old data science. When you try to work out the market potential for something fundamentally new, you’re actually trying to resolve two, linked problems. First, you have to look past what it is now, and see how much better and cheaper it might become Second, you need to think about who would buy it now, and who else would buy it once it is better and cheaper, and how it might be used.  Electric Landaulet The second problem is actually the hard one. Anyone with a sense of history ought to have been able to look at a phone the size of a b...

Is Track and Trace slowing down your warehouse?  One of the most critical pieces to the smooth operation of a distribution center, is  reliable and up-to-date inventory information,  Lately, however, inventory accuracy has been receiving even more attention than usual, partially do to an upsurge in regulations mandating that companies be able to track and trace their products particularly in the food and drug industries. Real-time inventory data are also necessary for the effective functioning of programs like Lean Distribution or Just-in-Time Inventories and for meeting ever-mounting demands to ship product faster.  "It all puts a premium on inventory accuracy and inventory control practices," says Mark Wheeler, director of supply chain solutions for the mobile technology company Zebra Technologies. Killing the Annual Physical Inventory - It's time to let the technology work for you. A study by Motorola (now part of Zebra Technologies), Warehouse of the Future, show...

Supply chain technology can not only establish you as the vendor of choice for your customers, but it can also be an addition to the revenue stream. McKesson currently leads list of top revenue-generating Health care IT vendors, McKesson was the leading revenue-generator in past three years among vendors in products for health care information technology, according to Healthcare Informatics. "Vendors are working harder than ever to improve their offerings in terms of core functionality, design for workflow, integration and interoperability, health information exchange, and so on,"  writes Mark Hagland, editor-in-chief of Healthcare Informatics. While you may not be a leading multi billion dollar company  in health care technology, McKesson is also selling supplies to these same clients and is leveraging the technology sales as a tool for grabbing a piece of that supply chain spending. The same spending you as a member of the health care distribution community might be after. ...