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The purpose of this paper is to investigate vendor managed inventory (VMI) for the supply of medicines between distributors and hospitals to identify factors that may affect VMI adoption.

Two contrasting VMI initiatives involving five organizations (three hospitals, one distributor and one manufacturer/supplier) are studied. A case study method with semi-structured interviews is used with triangulation in data collection, site visits and document analysis to enhance reliability and validity. The cases are analyzed and compared with respect to hospital, supplier, product and supply chain integration characteristics.

A successful public sector VMI initiative and an unsuccessful private sector VMI initiative are identified. The public sector supplier focuses on improving service level while the private sector supplier seeks to strengthen relationships with a key customer. Hospital characteristics, including type of hospital, top management perspectives and the hospital’s willingness to share information, are critical in decisions on VMI initiation or termination. Relatively stable demand products are preferred for a VMI approach. Hospitals may perceive risks in VMI adoption for medicines as it involves relinquishing control of critical supplies and may result in “lock-in” with a particular supplier.

The cases have been conducted in one country, which may affect generalization of the findings. Wider empirical evidence from other countries in both developed and less developed regions will be beneficial.

VMI is advocated as being beneficial in many supply contexts. However, it is challenging to implement. The study identifies factors that affect the adoption of VMI for hospital pharmaceuticals and provides guidance on initiating VMI in a hospital context.

The potential for VMI in public health projects to enable greater access to critical medicines is highlighted.

The paper provides supply side and demand side perspectives on VMI adoption in an important sector. It highlights the need for greater understanding of the perceived and actual risks in VMI from the perspective of both the hospital and the supplier and for much clearer advice on which pharmaceutical products are appropriate for VMI control in a hospital context.

The cost of providing healthcare is spiralling up in recent times. On the one hand, patients expect the highest quality of service, while on the other hand, the managers of the healthcare services want to minimise the total operating expenses. Hence, healthcare organisations implement lean thinking (LT) to achieve these twin objectives. LT reduces the eight wastes that are prevalent in the healthcare processes and functions. In particular, if the wasteful inventories related to expensive medical supplies are reduced, the resulting cost savings can help in providing affordable and accessible healthcare.

Hence, in this paper, a case study of a hospital is presented where LT is implemented. One of the projects was related to inventory reduction in the store of the catheterisation laboratory (cath lab). A hybrid methodology called multi-unit selective inventory control (MUSIC) that combined these three dimensions (3D), namely, consumption value, criticality and lead time or ease of availability was used to classify the medical supplies into different categories.

Based on the results obtained, various inventory systems and the associated tools and techniques of LT were proposed. For example, a deep dive into the A-class items revealed that some of the medical supplies fell under both vital and scarce categories. Hence, it was recommended that the case hospital should follow the economic order quantity (EOQ) with safety stock approach as these items were to be shipped from other states in India. Subsequently, the focus should be on developing a local supplier and attempts should be made to establish a kanban system with adequate information sharing.

This study demonstrates the step-by-step methodology of MUSIC-3D which would guide the procurement managers to apply the same in their organisation. It also helps them in identifying appropriate elements of LT for inventory reduction before the actual deployment.

None of the papers has utilised the MUSIC-3D methodology as a precursor for inventory reduction, specifically within the domain of LT. Similarly, identifying and proposing different type of inventory systems and various LT practices based on this unique method is a novel attempt.

The purpose of this study was to examine how cost, network and technology factors affect the use of mobile technologies for clients’ care in internal medicine department in Nigeria’s premier teaching hospital, the University College Hospital, Ibadan.

The study adopted a survey design covering a cross-section of medical doctors, pharmacists, nurses and medical laboratory technologists in the Department of Internal Medicine. A questionnaire guided data collection.

There is a high level of consciousness and use of mobile technologies for meeting healthcare needs of internal medicine clients in the University College Hospital, Ibadan and medical practitioners are deploying the technology most. However, there is no similar evidence of consciousness and use of wearable health-care technologies and solutions. The hospital makes some provision for mobile technology support for relevant medical staff and purposes. However, about three in 10 of the respondents reported that they use their own funds to recharge hospital-provided mobile phones means.

The study focusses only on one institution but the result reflects the situation in other hospitals, University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria being the major supplier of health and medical human resources in the country.

The hospital requires undertaking institutional assessment of mobile service need and consumption for clients’ care and thereafter make adequate provision to match the need. Furthermore, the institution could work out various forms of collaboration with mobile technology operators in the country to subsidise the cost of the use of telephones for clients’ care as part of their corporate social responsibility.

The institution could work out collaboration with mobile technology operators in the country to subsidise cost of mobile client care as part of the philanthropic and corporate social responsibility of telecom companies.

This study focusses mainly on internal medicine and has implication for a more proper understanding of adult deployment of mobile phones for client care.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the effectiveness of the Buy-and-Hold (BNH), Fee-for-Service (FFS), and Direct-to-pharmacy (DTP) agreements for the US pharmaceutical industry and its individual participants. There have been mixed responses to these agreements and the industry is currently under debate as to which contract would be best for the industry and its individual participants. The question is answered by comparing the agreements and settling the industry debate regarding the impact of these distribution agreements.

The model features multi-period production-inventory planning with time varying parameters in a decentralized setting. Under each distribution agreement, mathematical programming models are formulated to determine the profit maximizing production, inventory, and ordering decisions for the manufacturer and the wholesaler in a finite time horizon. The applicability of the model in the US pharmaceutical industry using real-world data is demonstrated.

It is shown that the DTP agreement always outperforms the BNH and FFS agreements. Furthermore, the DTP agreement is flexible because it allows the manufacturer and the wholesaler to split the additional profit in an arbitrary way. The findings reveal that the DTP agreement can improve total profit by about 0.08 - 1 percent (relative to FFS) and 5 percent (relative to BNH).

Considering the size of the pharmaceutical industry, efficient distribution agreements are imperative. Unfortunately, the existing literature provides insufficient guidance to help managers make this important decision. This knowledge gap is addressed in literature, and provides important insight for practitioners on what agreement is most beneficial for this industry.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the nature of collaborative arrangements that partners in Australian hospital supply chains use to manage inventories.

A case study involving a supply chain network of ten healthcare organisations (three pharmaceutical manufacturers, two wholesalers/distributors and five public hospitals) was studied. Data included 40 semi‐structured interviews, site visits and examination of documents.

This study highlights the existence of a variety of collaborative arrangements amongst supply chain partners such as the “Ward Box” system (a variant of the vender managed inventory system) between wholesalers/distributors and hospitals. The materials management departments were more willing than their pharmacy counterparts to participate in a variety of partial and complete outsourcing arrangements with wholesalers/distributors and other hospitals. Several contingent factors were identified that influenced development of collaborative arrangements.

This study is limited to the Australian healthcare sector. To improve generalisability, this study could be replicated in other industry sectors and countries.

Application of collaborative arrangements between manufacturers and wholesalers/distributors would improve inventory management practices across the supply chains. Also, learning from materials management departments could be transferable to pharmacy departments.

Several contingent variables for the implementation of collaborative inventory management arrangements between healthcare supply chain partners have been identified. Methodologically, data across three echelons in the supply chains (manufacturers, wholesalers/distributors and hospitals) were collected and analysed.

Humanitarian crises increase vulnerability of children to pneumonia, so aid agencies store pharmaceuticals in advance of this demand. Decisions on how much to store are plagued by many diverse challenges as is common in humanitarian contexts, so this study considers storing more medications to improve the relatively poor (∼80) demand coverage at a representative aid agency.

The paper combines inventory theory with health economics to calculate the impact inventory increases would have on the final cost of pneumonia treatment. It can then assess to what extent inventory can be increased while pneumonia treatment remains cost effective.

The study finds that more drug investment has only a small effect on the final treatment cost. Substantial drug inventory increases remain well within established guidelines for highly cost-effective treatments, so the agency should consider large increases as an efficient use of funding.

The study focuses on pneumonia treatment only to allow sufficient depth of analysis. Further research could look at many other treatments using the same approach, although some problem scenarios will include complicating parameters like drug perishability.

The level of pharmaceutical inventory at humanitarian warehouses is a high-value decision for the aid sector. The method shows the potential for health economics to provide practical decision support for a wide range of humanitarian and ministry of health warehouse operations. While large increases in inventory investment are within guidelines, there is an asymptotically increasing cost as demand coverage approaches 100%. As a result, decision makers may want to set a target demand coverage (e.g. 99%) and allocate remaining aid funding to other projects.

Many humanitarian supply chain decisions lack analytical support due to issues with complexity, scale or a lack of reliable input data, and this study is the first to provide analytical insights which can greatly improve the current approach to inventory control policies for pneumonia medications and beyond.

In the present context of a health-concious society, management of pharmaceutical supply chains has become more complex because it involves the life-saving interest of human being and requires the participation of different stakeholders such as pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, customers, information service providers and regulatory agencies. Limited research is available in the area of pharmaceutical supply chains. This paper aims to find the gaps in the literature by reviewing research papers on different strategic issues of supply chain management in the pharmaceutical sector.

In total, 136 research papers, mainly from refereed international journals, were reviewed to identify the issues of supply chain management (SCM) in the pharmaceutical supply chain. On the basis of a review, gaps are identified and research agenda is proposed.

It is observed from review that the pharmaceutical sector is not widely researched in developing countries because of many complexities in this supply chain. The share of pharmaceutical firms in the global market is also not very significant. Based on an extensive review of pharmaceutical supply chains, research gaps are identified in different areas such as inventory management, new product development, process development, capacity planning, network design, plant design, pipeline and development management, outsourcing logistics activities, reverse logistics, Lean manufacturing, green SCM and implementation of E-business processes and performance management. These strategic issues have been further classified into three broad categories, i.e. resources, processes and performance.

This paper explores major strategic areas of pharmaceutical supply chains for research. Findings of the paper will be highly useful for researchers to decide direction of future research.

The total yearly costs of medicine usage in The Netherlands are increasing year after year. The Dutch government tries to get this increase under control by price regulations, which forces pharmaceutical manufacturers in The Netherlands to manufacture and distribute more efficiently. In this case study, we analyse for a particular pharmaceutical manufacturer in The Netherlands, whose name is confidential, the outsourcing of distribution in combination with a cyclical planning procedure of the packaging of medicines. Next, this cyclical packaging plan is linked with a new order procedure. The proposed cyclical packaging plan together with the new order procedure appeared to be very favourable compared to the present procedures.

This paper seeks to investigate the fast‐growing problem of counterfeit prescription drugs and the steps being taken by both the private and public sectors to counteract it.

The author documents both the size and scope of the counterfeit pharmaceutical problem in the USA. The paper also looks at the steps being taken by pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers, as well as legal efforts being undertaken by federal and state governments, to counteract the growing concerns over fake medicines being introduced into the pharmaceutical supply chain.

The paper builds the business case for radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to be employed to track pharmaceuticals in the supply chain and counter the growing threat of counterfeit drugs.

The principal limitation of this research is that it is being conducted on both a rapidly evolving problem (counterfeit pharmaceuticals) and the use of a rapidly developing technology (RFID) to counteract it. Thus, in time, the parameters of both the counterfeit drug problem and the technological solutions to it may shift dramatically.

The paper demonstrates that RFID provides the only effective method of providing “track and trace” electronic pedigrees for prescription drugs.

The paper is a valuable overview of the problems associated with the vulnerability of the pharmaceutical supply chain in the USA and the potential cost‐effective, life‐saving use of RFID to better secure prescription drugs, both in transit and in inventory.

Presents a multicriteria approach to the ABC classification problem in inventory control. The proposed method, based on Saaty′s Analytic Hierarchy Process, rates items on both qualitative and quantitative criteria. Demonstrates the model through an example, using real data from the maintenance department stock room of a pharmaceutical company. A series of simulation experiments show how the resulting classification can benefit inventory control in this company.