February 16, 2022 – A year ago, were you aware of the term “dwell time?” Did the word “container” connote anything other than Tupperware? Did you know how many weeks in a typical month an over-the-road trucker is away from home? Had you ever stopped at the Corwith Yards on the Southwest Side of Chicago to see what goes on at a railroad intermodal freight terminal?
How quickly would you have made the connection between a resin factory fire in Texas and the availability and price of medical products? How about a cold spell in the Lone Star State, a hurricane in Puerto Rico, a cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal, a drought in Taiwan affecting microchip production, or a virus causing concern among authorities in a Chinese city named Wuhan?
Due to world events of the past 24 months, healthcare supply chain executives are finding that what they once took for granted, what they learned from the logistics gurus, doesn’t necessarily work during pandemics.
“PPE supply was the biggest challenge for 2020,” says Mark Henderson, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Concordance Healthcare Solutions. “The issues in 2021 have been much broader, as it is not just about aligning supply and demand, but rather the challenges related to getting product from the manufacturers to the distributors and providers. You can have an accurate picture of product needs and manufacturing volumes, but if you cannot get product from point A to point B in a timely fashion, you have an issue.”
Read more in this month’s Repertoire cover story.