Hospital Glove Supply Chain Proposal Essay

Team A Hospital has been a successful hospital in San Francisco, California for a number of years. The hospital has often been at the cutting edge of exciting and new technology but as with many other organizations the downturn in the economy has affected the hospital’s bottom line. The CEO of Team A Hospital is looking for any way possible to help cut costs. One way to cut costs would be to use a different supplier for surgical gloves. Currently, the gloves are purchased from a local supplier, but union issues have caused the price of the gloves to rise and have led to many inconsistent deliveries, which has often put the hospital in a difficult situation. The CEO would like management to look into purchasing gloves from an international supplier, preferably in China. Due to the many issues and problems Team A Hospital has had with the local union, the hospital has decided to look into purchasing gloves from Hello Kitty Gloves out of China. Currently Team A Hospital uses an average of 500 boxes of gloves a week. Research done by the hospital shows Hello Kitty Gloves will be able to meet all of the demands of the hospital. An agreement can also be made to guarantee next day delivery in the case of emergency, if needed. Purchasing gloves from Hello Kitty Gloves will solve all of the issues the hospital had been having with local unions. Team A Hospital will no longer have to worry about inconsistent deliveries from the union, and save money in the process. Total quality management (TQM) is a management approach aimed at satisfying all customer requirements, needs and expectations using a Continuous Improvement (CI) approach (Dvir, n.d.). There are six principles TQM follows to improve management. The six principles are customer focus, leadership, teamwork, continuous improvement of processes, measurements, and benchmarking. Customer focus is an important part of TQM. For the new materials requirement plan to be a success the plan needs to focus on the needs of the customer. By contracting with Hello Kitty Gloves, Team A Hospital will be putting the customer first. The hospital will no longer have to concern themselves with missed deliveries and concerns about not having needed supplies. Leadership is another principal of TQM. Management needs to take a leading role in looking for ways to save Team A Hospital money. It isn’t enough for management to look for ways for different departments to cut costs. For the new materials requirements plan to be successful management also needs to look for ways to cut corners in their department as well. Everyone in Team A Hospital needs to be involved for the plan to succeed. Teamwork plays an important role in the success. Each team member that is part of the new plan needs to be on board to help the hospital reach their goals. Without each team member playing their part the plan is doomed to fail. No plan is perfect. When management set up the new plan to purchase gloves from Hello Kitty Gloves they did all they could to ensure there would be no problems, but as with every plan unseen problems are sure to come up. This is where continuous improvement of processes comes in. When problems do come up management needs to address these concerns quickly so the same problems that developed with the previous glove manufacturer don’t develop again. The best way to tell if a plan is a success or a failure is by measuring the results. Some ways to measure if the new material requirements plan is a success is by measuring a few main points of the plan (example- delivery time, stock on hand, inventory turnover). By analyzing these measurements against the old methods used the hospital can measure their success, or failure. Benchmarking is also an important step in TQM as well. Team A Hospital can look at other hospitals and see who is supplying their hospital gloves. Perhaps the other hospitals have found ways to save even more money in purchasing hospital gloves. Also, other hospitals might have a better way to measure results of the plan as well.