NHS Supply Chain Case Study

735 Words2 Pages

The purpose of supply chain is to improve overall performance of a business. Whether organisation is functioning national or worldwide the competition is always increasing and offering products at the lowest possible cost with the best possible customer service is a way to ensure market share.
NHS Supply Chain delivers patient-focussed healthcare products and supply chain services to UK’s National Heal Service (NHS). The foremost important goal is to provide more than £1 billion in savings to the NHS by 2016 trough supply-chains. The organisation is already saved over £200 million since 2006.
NHS end-to-end supply chain service includes procurement, logistics, e-commerce and customer and supplier care. With over two thousand employees, they manage the procurement and delivery of over six hundred thousand products ranging from bandages to food cans, from medical jackets to implants and even diagnostic gear such as MRI scanners.
Supply chain was designed from the NHS Logistics Authority and parts of the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA). They are operated by DHL (DHL Supply Chain Limited) on behalf of the NHS Business Authority.
The recent example of NHS Supply chain was ‘Daniels Healthcare’ cooperating with NHS. These companies had a goal to find solution for more efficient way of packaging.
Challenge
With Polypropylene increases of up to 60%, Daniels Healthcare, a small to medium enterprise (SME), who supplies clinical waste containers to the healthcare sector, worked in collaboration with NHS Supply Chain to remove cost from the supply chain to avoid significant price increases for the NHS.
Objectives
• Save costs in the supply chain to offset Polypropylene cost increases.
• Save product miles through reduced deliveries to...

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...hold in favour of the 11.5l and 22l containers. The packaging solutions for these products delivered savings faster and with less impact on both organisations. This enabled everyone involved to demonstrate a quicker return on investment as well as providing valuable learning’s for more challenging projects in the future. Upon approval of the proposal, Daniels Healthcare started to run down existing stock, having changed the packaging specifications and production plans. Meanwhile NHS Supply Chain updated their systems (allowing for new quantity per pallet and amended product description) and prepared customer communication to be distributed by their customer services team.
Live
Customers started receiving the containers loose on roll cage deliveries from 1 October 2012. Customer services were briefed to ensure any enquiries were dealt with quickly and effectively.

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