03 Supply Chain pain points

Uncovering pain points

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What are pain points within the Red Cross Biomed supply chain?

Current list: Pain point submissions

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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