from a different mindset than tradition-
al healthcare and provide an outside
perspective on what I think a supply
chain should look like. I tell my boss
all the time that we don’t need to
reinvent the supply chain...we just
need to correctly implement. It’s
important to pick strategic partners
with whom you go through the process
of demand planning up to five years in
advance and you’re sharing informa-
tion so that both of you can improve
the supply chain; that is what happensin other industries with just
as much unpredictability.”
With the importance of establishing
and maintaining successful partner-
ships vital to all businesses’ success,
Steward Health Care utilises a variety
of tools to help analyse a range
of different data in order to predict
patient volume to allow staff to be
treated accordingly. Prokopis explains
what he looks for when seeking
to formulate a successful strategic
relationship. “At the end of the day,
a good partner is the one that says,
‘If we do this or if we try that, we have
the opportunity to move this KPI
or metric’. We’re always looking
for ‘strategic’ partners; we hope
someone’s going to come to us and
say, ‘Here’s some ideas that we haven’t
implemented or maybe you haven’t
contemplated. Let’s see if we can
figure out how to do this together’.
Those are the kinds of things that
are extremely important to do. To me,
a partner is someone who really wants
to work with you, that generates new
ways of doing things and thinks outside
the box to see if we can approach the
problem from a different perspective.”—
Michael Prokopis,
Vice President of Supply Chain
at Steward Health Care“ It’s important to pick
strategic partners
with whom you go
through the process
of demand planning
up to five years in
advance and you’re
sharing information
so that both of you
can improve the
supply chain”
125125125http://www.businesschief.com