Category: Health Care Equipment & Supplies

Healthcare Supply Chains

By S.-H. Cho and H. Zhao📧

In Handbook of Healthcare Analytics: Theoretical Minimum for Conducting 21st Century Research on Healthcare Operations, Chapter 8, 2018 (Invited. Peer-reviewed/refereed). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119300977.ch8

Healthcare supply chains are usually long and complex, involving many parties and unique intermediaries, such as a Group Purchasing Organization (GPO), as well as very different products, such as brand and generic products. This chapter presents an extensive review of past research efforts in healthcare supply chains and provides two particular examples. The first example studies the redesign of drug purchasing contracts for generic injectables to mitigate drug shortages. The second example studies the redesign of supply contracts for influenza vaccines to address a mismatch between supply and demand. The chapter presents the models of supply chains for generic injectable drugs and for influenza vaccines, respectively, and characterizes the performance of various supply contracts. It reviews the broad literature on healthcare supply chains, and discusses promising future work and directions. The chapter focuses on ample future research opportunities in healthcare and pharmaceutical supply chains.

Keywords: Direct shipment model; Generic injectable drug supply chain; Group purchasing organization; Healthcare supply chains; Influenza vaccine supply chain; Pharmaceutical supply chains; Supply chain management literature; Supply contracts

Supply Chain Optimization in Healthcare

By H. Zhao📧

In Advances and Trends in Optimization with Engineering Applications SIAM, Chapter 35: 469–478, 2017 (Invited. Peer-reviewed/refereed). https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9781611974683.ch35

Among the large amount of research on healthcare, relatively limited literature has been devoted to the healthcare supply chain domain. In this chapter, we particularly discuss issues with supply chains of healthcare products (e.g., drugs) and supplies, a less-studied area. We cover supply chain issues related to pharmaceutical capacity planning, production planning, inventory management, and supply chain contracts, each in a different section. In each section, we start with the unique challenges in the specific setting, followed by sampling papers targeted at these problems for basic ideas of solution and main results. Due to the limited space and the desire to expose to the readers the richness in this area, our coverage for each topic is far from sufficient but is a good starting point for interested readers to explore further.

A Comparative Case Study of Sustaining Quality as a Competitive Advantage

By Su, H., Linderman, K.📧, Schroeder, R.G., and Van de Ven, A. H.

In Journal of Operations Management, 2014, 32 (7–8): 429–445. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2014.09.003

Many organizations have achieved high levels of quality performance only to lose it later on. These firms that were once quality leaders can no longer compete on the quality of their products or services. This research develops a theoretical understanding of how organizations can sustain a quality advantage. It offers a conceptual definition of sustaining a quality advantage which involves not only sustaining a high level of quality performance, but also sustaining a high consistency of quality performance. A comparative case study provides evidence of three capabilities that distinguish firms with different levels of sustaining quality. These capabilities include: (1) meta-learning, (2) sensing weak signals, and (3) resilience to quality disruptions. The case analysis argues that meta-learning helps sustain a high level of quality performance, while sensing weak signals and resilience improves the consistency of quality performance. This study offers a dynamic capability-based strategy that explains how to sustain a competitive advantage in quality, which may also have implications for sustaining other operational competitive advantages.

Keywords: Operations strategy; Quality Management; Red Queen Effect

Delayed Differentiation for Multiple Lifecycle Products

By V. Daniel Guide📧, J. D. Abbey, and G. Souza

In Production and Operations Management, 2013, 22 (3): 588–602. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1937-5956.2012.01370.x

Modular design allows several generations of products to co‐exist in the installed base as product designs change to take advantage of improved performance via modular upgrades. Use of a common base platform and modular design approach allows a firm to offer updates for improved performance and flexibility via remanufacturing when products have multiple lifecycles. However, as the product evolves through multiple lifecycles, the large pool of product variants leads to the curse of product proliferation. In practice, product proliferation causes high levels of line congestion and results in longer lead times, higher inventory levels, and lower levels of customer service. To offer insights into the product proliferation problem, the authors employ a delayed differentiation model in a multiple lifecycle context. The delayed differentiation model gives flexibility to balance trade‐offs between disassembly and reassembly costs by adaptively changing the push‐pull boundary. An adaptive, evolving push‐pull boundary provides flexibility for a remanufacturing firm to meet changing customer demands. The delayed differentiation model includes both a mixed‐integer linear program and an analytical investigation of the evolutionary nature of the push‐pull boundary. Both field observations and experimental results show that the nature of product proliferation and changing demand structures play significant roles in the cost and flexibility of the evolving delayed differentiation system.

Keywords: Multiple lifecycle; Delayed differentiation; CLSC; Modular design; Remanufacturing