Healthcare Supply Chain Technology and Strategy

Drone Deliveries:The  way forward for the Supply Chain. Have you been mastering the art of just-in-time (JIT) delivery for years now? Before it used to take a week or so to get products from your suppliers and distributors' warehouses to the End user Customer . Then it was a couple days. And, now the norm has dropped to few hours thanks to vendor-managed inventory programs and campus hubs that keep suppliers and OEM operations in close vicinity to each other. But what will the future bring next? Imagine what your JIT delivery strategy could look like if, say, drones were able to deliver products bypassing all the traffic on local roads? What if your deliveries could be made in less than 30 minutes? The possibility may not be too far off. And, when it comes to fruition inbound and outbound logistics, and supply chain strategies will have to evolve.  Several top-tier companies are exploring delivery-by-drone opportunities, and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is cons...

Today’s technologies allow digital businesses (as well as a growing roster of traditional companies) to change prices frequently, even minute-by-minute in real time if they want to. It is not unusual for prices to change on sites like Amazon, Expedia, and Priceline several times a day. But managers are struggling to understand these tactics. How often should companies really change their prices?  For any enterprise, the biggest constraint in changing prices is the “menu cost.” Historically, price changes were expensive and time-consuming. Price lists had to be recalculated, typed up, and mailed to customers; new catalogs, labels, and signs had to be printed. This forced companies to maintain prices. Throughout the 2000s, even as the Internet continued to grow, prices remained the same for  months at a time . Over the past few years, however, technology has drastically shifted the economics of price changes.  Pricing optimization software  helps companies link co...