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Bellwether League, Inc. National Health Care Supply Chain Week happens October 6-12, so how are you celebrating?

SCHAUMBURG, IL (September 30, 2024) — To celebrate National Health Care Supply Chain Week next week, branded swag and food may be popular, but let's get creative and push the boundaries of potential options to fete your team, shall we?

To quote the lede (journalist's term for opening paragraph) of a story by SAP's Oyku Ilgar and Zoryana Zagorodnya in Forbes, April 26, 2024 ... "In a crazy world where robots are calling it quits from working too much, popular restaurants are getting sued over a chicken wing shortage, and your long-awaited gaming console is stuck on a ship in a super busy canal, who knows better than anyone that ship happens? Supply chain professionals."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2024/04/26/on-national-supply-chain-day-ship-happens-to-make-a-better-world/

Simply priceless.

Here are 12 ideas to consider in celebrating supply chain this week as the 17th annual Bellwether League Foundation Induction & Recognition Event (BLFIRE) does just that on Monday, October 7, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

  1. Use AI to create the best icon or image that represents your supply chain team.
  2. Host a bar-code or RFID scavenger hunt by affixing labels to products and people for team members to locate throughout the week. The winner who finds all of them first earns a week in Accounts Payable.
  3. Host a product-related "transactathon" where you divide into small teams to order products via MMIS/ERP. The first team to get the market basket of products the dock accurately by using supply data standards wins — and potentially earns a grant to attend GS1's annual conference.
  4. Host a "Healthcare Supply Chain Jeopardy" (any insinuation of stockouts and backorders is purely coincidental) game show where the trivia questions are in the format of a PO line-item field request. The winner(s) earn(s) their name(s) etched on the gold-plated Supply Chain Kanban Bin (akin to the NHL's Stanley Cup). Think about naming the Kanban Bin after a prominent supply chain icon.
  5. Create a supply chain-themed meme and share it on LinkedIn, TikTok, X or some other "approved" social media outlet. Bonus points for crafting it in the form of a musical rap with GTIN rhymes.
  6. Create a supply chain team yearbook to share, complete with portrait photos and appropriate superlatives (positive ones that can be funny without crossing the line) as voted on by the team.
  7. Design a "Shark Tank"-like presentation to deliver to the C-suite that features all the hard and soft value that Supply Chain brought to the organization during the year and link those outcomes to the patients. Focus also on the anticipated contributions for the coming year. Bonus points to anyone showing up as Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner or Kevin "Mr. Wonderful" O'Leary.
  8. Host an Olympic-style two-bin Kanban race to see who can restock to PAR the quickest.
  9. To demonstrate how valuable Supply Chain REALLY is to the organization and its patients, recall two words from your high school experience: Ditch Day! (Okay, that's just a joke. Don't do that.)
  10. Implement the best idea you learned from AHRMM 2024 in Columbus, OH, September 22-25.
  11. Demonstrate the best way to announce to the doctors and nurses that a backorder has ended: Have someone from your department jump out of a closet and yell, "SUPPLIES!" while throwing confetti shredded from expired purchase orders.
  12. Take a collection and then acquire something small but meaningful and thoughtful to share with each inpatient, encouraging them to heal, courtesy of their friends in supply chain.

Editor's Note: This was written before the opening keynote at AHRMM 2024 in Columbus, OH, on Monday, September 23.