Corewell Health Supply Chain
Please tell us about your role and responsibilities at Corewell Health
My role involves a lot of different components. I manage the operational excellence and products implementation teams within supply chain. Our OPEX team is focused on project management and process improvement within supply chain. And our product implementation team is very aptly named, but they help to coordinate the implementation of any sort of product change within our organization. This involves any new products that are being introduced to the system or any sort of standardization activity that’s happening, any sort of product change typically will run through that team. That team is new and growing, so we’re excited to get them up and running.
In addition to those things, any sort of integration activity falls to my team to manage from a supply chain perspective. When I say integration, I mean if there is another location joining the Corewell Health Network and Corewell Health is either acquiring or merging that location. We help integrate them into the overall system from a supply chain perspective.
We also manage the communication strategy related to our very large and diverse workforce that’s scattered across the system, either on site or within a corporate capacity.
One of the last things is I partner frequently with other leaders to help develop our strategic direction. We are starting to lean more into the development of our talent strategy to help support team members and leaders in their growth and development at Corewell Health.
Those are a lot of different categories. That must keep you on your toes.
Absolutely. And we’re a fairly new department with the teams that we have. I’ve only been in my role since July of last year. In that short amount of time, we have been trying to figure out what the long-term vision for the department looks like and building the plane as we fly it, so to speak.
What’s exciting – and challenging – with working on the ground floor of an initiative?
What’s exciting is number one, we get to support supply chain teams. We are the ones that can identify the gaps that we currently have in our overall structure and try to figure out if there’s a way our teams or my department can fill some of those gaps.
It’s also very exciting because you get to start new. While we’re not starting from a completely clean slate, we get to understand and develop what the overall strategy is going to look like. It’s more forward-thinking than maybe some other teams get to experience.
But ultimately, those can be some of the disadvantages to overcome. We’re trying to execute work while also trying to understand what the future vision looks like. So, my team members are incredibly resilient. They are hard-working and they know what they must accomplish here and now. They’re also sometimes okay with a little bit of ambiguity. I don’t think that my teams would be successful if they were not okay with that ambiguity. Of course, it can be a little bit challenging. That’s the biggest disadvantage – the unknown or the ambiguity associated with trying to stand up a new department.
How did you get started in supply chain?
To be completely honest, I didn’t know what supply chain was when I started my freshman year at Michigan State. I think just through some exposure via the business college, it became more and more attractive to me because you get a very unique view of the end-to-end business.
After a few internships in college within the area, I started my career in manufacturing. My time in manufacturing was focused on global sourcing, logistics, and continuous improvement. Those were incredibly invaluable experiences that I would not trade for anything because I was able to bring a lot of those skills that I learned from manufacturing and try to apply them to healthcare.
Back in 2018, I transitioned to what was Spectrum Health at the time. I started in our indirect sourcing space and then moved more into a project role. One of the very first projects I was able to lead was the implementation of a new ERP system, which was a very challenging project, but I was also able to learn a lot. And from there, I think I just found my niche in being able to lead people and lead projects.
You mentioned a few facets of your position like process improvement, product changes, and standardization. Are there any success stories you’d like to share?
There are so many projects that my team is working on right now, but as far as successes that we have been able to celebrate, two immediately come to mind.
The first I wasn’t directly involved through the whole process. We had to manage a lot of the supply disruptions within our supply chain teams. This has been confusing at times, but we’re not alone in experiencing those disruptions. We’re one of many healthcare systems that have faced those. It was really encouraging to see so many people in groups come together to tackle a problem with the patient in mind.
And then the second one I’m particularly proud of is the reset and creation of an overall supply chain strategy for the year, and with shared metrics across the department. Being able to speak the same language and understand how each of our teams plays a role in each of the metrics or large projects is encouraging to see. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but once we’re able to get to a place where everyone is bought in, everyone truly understands what we’re striving for, it’s a lot easier to determine our focus and what we should be working on.