A successful supply chain leader's toolbox includes a curious set of tools

By Rick Dana Barlow

Decades ago, in the halcyon days of healthcare supply chain yore, terms like "supply chain," "resource management," "materials management" and other derivatives may have been a bit more familiar outside of healthcare but conceptually just out of reach inside of healthcare.

Until the 1970s, healthcare had purchasing. Period. Even outside of healthcare, companies and professionals had purchasing, knew what it meant and what the department did. "Materials management" as a "brand" sprouted, along with related spelling and phrasing varieties (e.g., material vs. materiel with a nod and a wink toward the military and services in place of management). By the mid-1990s, "resource management" grew in popularity and then in the 2000s, "supply chain" gained a foothold.

These branding changes reflected the profession's — and industry's — expanded and still expanding role beyond merely buying, moving and storing stuff.

Nowadays, Supply Chain remains involved in a plethora of areas, including project management and purchased services; shared services through mergers, acquisitions and partnerships; value analysis; clinical consulting and facilitation; supplier and vendor partnerships; as well as potentially overseeing Biomedical Engineering, Environmental Services, Facilities and Landscape Management, Mailroom, Print Shop, Transportation, and to a certain extent, business incubators and innovation labs.

With patient care services migrating beyond the four walls of the acute care hospital and even beyond the ambulatory surgery center, clinic, diagnostic imaging center, physician practice and retail healthcare outlets to homes via telemedicine and in-person visitations, Supply Chain must extend into technology and clinical customer service that stretches the application of "hospital rounds" in new ways.

Carpenters and mechanics may have a multitude of devices and gadgets in their toolboxes to carry out their duties and responsibilities of building and/or fixing and/or maintaining and/or repairing something, which may lead some to wonder about the devices and gadgets in the healthcare supply chain leaders' toolboxes. Desktop and hand-held computers and scanners may come to mind, and to an extent some type of remote-controlled robotic vehicles and so forth.

For the 21st century supply chain leader, however, forward-thinking professionals, by and large, think bigger picture — more internal and organic.

Managing, relating to people

Supply Chain experts contend that the well-equipped supply chain leader knows how to work with people — colleagues, peers, frenemies and foes — within the provider, supplier and even payer segments of the market.

"With remote technology connecting us in different ways, there is both promise and concern," said Deborah Templeton, R.Ph., Chairman, Bellwether League Foundation, and Retired Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), System Support Services, Geisinger Health, Danville, PA. "There is promise in that access to many more and diverse people, talent and input is possible. However, not knowing folks on a more personal level can make the connections more difficult. The successful leaders will have the ability to rally teams that may have never met. They will need to explore what drives each individual and then look for common ground to connect teams that may not always be in person. Having empathy and understanding of individuals will be important."

Siobhan O'Bara, Senior Vice President, Community Engagement, GS1 US, Silver Sustaining Sponsor, boils the essentials down to three necessary aspects — people, process and systems.

"You need the ability to motivate, manage and assess the people you work with," O'Bara told Leaders & Luminaries. "You need scalable, repeatable processes that enable consistent operations and collaboration. And you need technology tools that support execution across the entire supply chain.

"All stakeholders in your supply chain need to be thinking about these same three areas and ideally, how your people, processes and systems interoperate with theirs," she continued. "The foundation for two of the three areas — processes and technologies — are based in the ability to generate and respond to standardized data. Supply chains are connected networks that rely on effective coordination between different organizations; their ability to exchange information based on accurate, complete and reliable data is critical.

"Digital technology is enabling meaningful supply chain improvements — like machine learning and AI, the merging of physical and digital procurement, and all the evolutions that will continue. Leaders cannot lead without understanding how technology can be utilized and how it will continue to evolve and enable progress," she indicated.

The fundamentals still matter, O'Bara insists.

"We should not lose sight of the simple truth: For all the progress we have made, supply chains are fundamentally serving the same purpose they always have — someone has to produce products, someone else needs to procure those products and finally the products need to be delivered," she noted. "With tremendous advances and opportunities ahead, foundationally, supply chain leaders need to utilize new and existing tools to keep up with ongoing evolution. At GS1 US, we believe data standards are the key to making supply chains more efficient and effective by creating a common language between trading partners' systems for end-to-end visibility."

Ray Seigfried, Bellwether Class of 2012, former Delaware State Representative, Dover, DE, with extensive healthcare system supply chain experience stresses critical thinking as valuable to the point that the supply chain leader remains "engaged in continuous learning, communicates with the entire supply team, identifies supply chain problems experienced by clinical staff and is committed to solving them, and to learn from patients how to improve," he said.

Connecting the dots

The supply chain leader really needs to be the conduit, the connector to whom everyone turns for direction and resources, according to Barbara Strain, CVAHP, Bellwether Class of 2021, Principal, Barbara Strain Consulting LLC, Charlottesville, VA.

But it's more than just being the "go-to guy" who "has/knows" a guy.

The supply chain leader maintains an up-to-date electronic and back up hardcopy "rolodex" with internal and external names, roles, mobile numbers, landline numbers, email addresses, physical building names/room numbers, home addresses and staff emergency contacts who can drive a commercial vehicle, Strain suggests.

Why? Strain lists five examples in a pinch.

• A localized earthquake took out cell towers so analog phones were the best way to communicate
• During bad snowstorms a special transport is sent to pick up staff at their home or that of their emergency contact
• A flood in other geographic locations rendered all but email as the only means of external communication with distributors and suppliers
• Walkie-talkies must be available for internal use when devices for texting cannot be accessed
• Local hardware stores stock batteries, oxygen/gas cylinder supply depots, potable water and other resources.

"A supply chain leader is as good as they can put wheels in motion that can assure continuity of service to their customers," Strain observed. "Be the calm duck above the water while paddling as fast as you can."

Tom Lubotsky, Bellwether Class of 2022, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain, Allina Health, Minneapolis, adds another dimension to the concept by linking sound supply chain leadership to developing a management system that assists with conducting standard work each day. He describes the management system as including three tenets:

• "Leader Standard Work" creates focus and builds capacity for improvement.
• "Standard Work" represents a recipe for performing a process correctly, safely and consistently every time.
• "Visual Controls" make problems visible and enables the determination of indicators for mistake-proofing and error prevention.

"By developing this management system, leaders can [and] will ensure their teams are running a smooth day and building out improvement for tomorrow," Lubotsky said. "The assurance that Supply Chain leaders are dedicating enough time to strategic work is the other key reason why this management system is so vital to ingrain into each day. Finally, new and improved processes bolstered by visual controls and measurement will manifest as this management system evolves."

Lubotsky highlights five key benefits from this system in that it:

1. Creates focus on what needs to be done, supports achieving goals and objectives.
2. Reduces chaos and ensures those who rely on you get the support they need.
3. Compiles repeatable/predictable tasks into a single document.
4. Visually identifies roadblocks, interruptions, and variations.
5. Allows for other to back you up and ease transitions of new leaders into role.

Leadership hinges first and foremost on verbal and written communications, insists Dick Perrin, Bellwether Class of 2014, CEO, Active Innovations Inc., Annapolis, MD.

"This is followed closely by the ability to use technology tools (computers and programs) for modeling, analysis and evaluation of impacts on future performance," Perrin noted. "And then there are the talents. This covers a wide range of capabilities. Leadership has many needs for skills and talents, including the ability for being able to actively listen with empathy for concerns of individuals you are interacting with relative to their needs. Providing empathy is frequently coupled with needs for forgiveness and flexibility in one's thinking.

"Leadership abilities also need to include capabilities to think clearly to inspire others through thoughts, words and actions," he continued. "Once again the ability to communicate clearly through both the written and verbal word are central to effective leadership in providing clear messaging and leadership on best — selected/desired — approaches to dealing with complex issues either as part of ongoing business needs or responding to a crisis."

Fred W. Crans, Bellwether Class of 2020, Business Development Executive, Healthcare, St. Onge Company, York, PA, forecasts a formal supply chain education as necessary "because systems will continue to conflate in number but increase in complexity, making it virtually impossible to go from the receiving dock to the board room without the proper formal education."

In addition to a formal supply chain education, Crans listed four other key traits as tools.

1. The ability to gain the ear and formal support of the C-suite — and to become part of the C-suite. "Supply chain is both an operational and strategic element in an enterprise's existence," he said. "Today, even after its brief moment of glory during the pandemic, supply chain is seen by senior leadership as a transactional and support function staffed by lower-level personnel."
2. The ability to argue for the resources he/she needs to build a self-sustaining supply chain. "History has dug a hole of disrespect and under-resourcing — both in numbers of FTEs and types of FTEs — that will never go away until it is led by true supply chain experts," he observed.
3. The willingness to bring outside experts in — either as permanent staff or as temporary resources. "True supply chain expertise resides outside of healthcare and decision support, directing and future state planning expertise is not currently present in the vast majority of IDNs," he added.
4. Proper planning will implement appropriate technology when needed.

Humility and attention to detail are two elements that demark true leaders, according to Charlie Miceli, C.P.M., Vice President and Network Chief Supply Chain Officer, The University of Vermont Health Network, Burlington, VT.

"If you don't know something, learn about it," he urged. "Embrace technology that helps — not just because of the coolness factor or that it's the latest thing. Have more than one source of reference/expertise. Take care of your team and serve the organization, the team, the family."

True leadership is rooted in eight characteristics and traits as defined by Jamie Kowalski, Bellwether Class of 2017, Retired CEO, Jamie C. Kowalski Consulting LLC, Whitefish Bay, WI; Bellwether League Foundation Co-Founder and Board Secretary; Bellwether League Inc. Co-Founder and Founding Chairman, 2007-2013. Those eight qualities include:

• Possessing and exhibiting ethics and morality
• Being analytical; proving your positions, answers and conclusions to yourself before going forward with them
• Having good judgment is much more important than being smart
• Having wisdom also is more important than being smart — especially book smart
• Practicing verbal and written communication and being a good listener
• Showing respect for others as they can likely teach you something
• Putting others' best interests above self-interests
• Recognizing that technology is not the solution, but rather one tool that can help achieve the solution.