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Innovation - ARC Biomed Supply Chain
01 Welcome and introduction
02 How do I participate?
03 Supply Chain pain points
04 Submit your ideas!
05 Background reading & videos
About the ARC Innovation Team
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03 Supply Chain pain points

Uncovering pain points

Not sure what pain points are or how to identify them? Use the triangle icons to expand/collapse the information below.
What is a pain point?
A pain point is a problem that someone is experiencing - that someone could be a customer, employee, volunteer, donor, etc.
Pain points could be:
Productivity pain points - time wasted
Process pain points - process inefficiencies
Financial pain points - high or unnecessary costs
Support pain points - not enough help or support to address problems
What are questions you could ask to uncover pain points?
What are frustrations that your customers have mentioned?
What takes up the most time in your day? Are there heavily manual tasks you have to do often? Nonstandard processes?
What are frustrations you currently experience?
What is the biggest challenge you’re currently facing?
What’s the main thing you would say is holding the organization back from growth?
If you had an unlimited budget, what is the first improvement you would make?
What is one thing you would change about the current operations of your business or team?
What is the difference between a pain point and a solution?
A pain point is a problem that someone is experiencing, while a solution is a means of solving a problem.
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What are pain points within the Red Cross Biomed supply chain?

Thank you for your submissions! Here is the list of pain points shared by the team as of November 2021.
Current list: Pain point submissions
2
Laboratory Services
5
Lots of paperwork throughout process. Very cumbersome and takes up a lot of space at the facility.
Red Cross Employees
Training
Red Cross Employees
Order Management - The order management/ customer service department was a great idea, however-as it stands- it’s not working. Creating a “middle man” has caused severe communication issues and frustration between Hospital Services/distribution, IRL, and the customers. Hospital Services having no concept of Bloodhub and only using eProgesa is a large area of miscommunication. It now take 3 departments to track where an order is for a customer instead of HS just walking into their fridge to check out the situation and communication with IRL if indicated. The amount of missed/ incorrect information in the transferring from Bloodhub to eProgesa is staggering. Once this is discovered, it again takes 3 departments to solve where the issues happened.
Customer (Hospitals)
Red Cross Employees
System level HLA matching
Red Cross Employees
Customer (Hospitals)
Applying delivery charges
Customer (Hospitals)
Red Cross Employees
Manufacturing
6
Hard to sort timed products in order of urgency. Could result in discarded product.
Donors
Red Cross Employees
Customer (Hospitals)
Could lose sight of a blood bag and must search the facility for it to stay in compliance. May need to search through trash.
Red Cross Employees
There are frictions in putting product back in the right place or retrieving the right product when the walk-in refrigerators are very cold to be in.
Red Cross Employees
Excessive manual documentation associated with manufacturing Apheresis platelets (both PR and LVDS). Numerous places for errors due to incorrect documentation. Multiple start-stop-start again hand-offs for second person reviews. Puts pressure on the manufacturing process which is already operating on tight time constraints.
Red Cross Employees
Selecting monthly QC of double reds
Red Cross Employees
Increased Labor involved with Power Reds- Double Red (DRBC) production
Red Cross Employees
1
Supply Chain Operations
17
Difficult to track where the blood bags and kits throughout the supply chain process.
Red Cross Employees
Shipped not wants & Wants not shipped
Customer (Hospitals)
Don’t know when a delivery has been made. No technology supporting this - need to walk and check periodically.
Red Cross Employees
Tote packing is documented manually on paper by our staff. Difficult to oversee metrics at a national level.
Red Cross Employees
Opened boxes of blood bags are not as appealing to use as brand new boxes. It is more difficult to track several lot numbers during a drive than one lot number.
Red Cross Employees
Don’t know the order in which to deliver products - ETA / urgency not well communicated.
Customer (Hospitals)
Red Cross Volunteers
Red Cross Employees
Totes are manually packed.
Red Cross Employees
Need to acquire assets that could improve operations e.g. cell phones, barcode scanners, handcarts
No self-service way to digitize processes
Red Cross Employees
Red Cross Volunteers
Paid parking at hospitals when delivering blood
Red Cross Employees
Red Cross Volunteers
Cannot always get a courier to deliver blood products
Customer (Hospitals)
Red Cross Employees
The person that submits STAT blood orders to be packed and the Technician that packs them for hospitals neither has a real time blood inventory nor the totals for the orders submitted. This makes it impossible to identify inventory shortfalls timely. Late identification of inventory shortfalls reduces our ability to spread out inventory when needed and identify/communicate shipping delays.
Customer (Hospitals)
Red Cross Employees
Inventory management system Coupa miscodes internal orders (GL string incorrect upon receipt of order)
Red Cross Employees
Lack of communication to customers and receiving facility when standing orders/direct shipments are not filled by shipping site. Customers confront our drivers about the orders. Our drivers are unaware of what they are talking about, and distribution staff don’t have any easy way to get an update since it was shipped by a different location. Sometimes can take several days for the customer to get an update/product.
Customer (Hospitals)
Connect: communication problems between all departments/customers
Customer (Hospitals)
Red Cross Employees
Sorting orders for distribution - printed chronologically and end up in stacks
Red Cross Employees
Customer (Hospitals)
Teams phones that are accessed through YeaLink desk phone
Red Cross Employees
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Pain points: Word cloud
2
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Contributors - Pain point exercise
2
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Export painpoints (admin functionality)
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