National Institutes Of Health Supply Chain Center

NIH (National Institutes of Health) Supply Chain Center:

The NIH Supply Center is comprised of both self-service stores at local campus in Bethesda, MD, and a 150,000-sq. ft. warehouse facility. The Supply Center Warehouse offers a large quantity of office supplies for administrative needs, medical and lab supplies for providing care and scientific research.

NIH Supply Chain Management Functions

Research is the entire focus of NIH, without the proper supplies and chemicals necessary to do scientific research, their focus to improve medicine, technology and health would not exist. NIH Supply Center is providing a service not only to their customers, the institutions and centers within the NIH, but also to patients and customers who rely on

Focusing on decreasing costs for institutions and centers to order items through third party vendors, limiting purchase card transactions that would cost more to be done through partner organizations individually. Their SCM design is functional in a way because many of their products have sustained demand, or predictable demand. On the other hand, they also have an innovative supply chain due to the science and research side of the house which forces them to face unpredictability in demand, and inefficient supply chain and unhappy customers. As technology, medicine, and science continue to change, so does the demand for items, making other items obsolete. The NIH supply warehouse either faces items that are in stock-out for extended periods of time or have a large amount of excess inventory. NIH Supply center must find a medium where their “functional products have an efficient business process, and their innovative items have a responsive business process; addressing and meeting both uncertainty and certainties in demand” (Fisher,

Although there are intrinsic and extrinsic risks that any organization faces. The supply center should begin focusing on the intrinsic factors to improve the SC within their organization because they are a unique organization regarding logistical efforts and the customers they serve. Improving collaboration depends greatly on providing incentives to employees for collaboration efforts, information sharing through both data and information technologies, and fostering business relationships in each