Analysis and design of policies to improve medical devices availability in the network

• Main Author: Aditya, Steven
• Other Authors: Rajesh Piplani
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Systems engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/75523
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The availability of orthopedics instruments in the region is critical for all stakeholders. For patients, a delay in surgery could increase the mortality rate. For the healthcare organization, a delay in operation could increase their operating cost. Due to the nature of the orthopedics surgery which is urgent and can be life-threatening, companies need to ensure that both instruments and implants are ready for the surgery. Despite the needs of having high availability, there are some challenges that are faced in orthopedics instruments planning. One of them is the huge SKUs to manage, with wide types of surgeries, various instruments sizes and many material types. Next challenge comes from instruments demand frequency. Generally, the order comes in the first quarter of the year, since the customers want to use the sets immediately and to get an earlier return on their investment. Last but not least, is the long lead time to manufacture a medical device, which is due to the strict regulations and quality requirements. With all these requirements and challenges, this report is written to explore the opportunity to improve the availability of instruments in Asia-Pacific region. The steps involved are to review the current instruments planning process in Johnson & Johnson, followed by identifying the opportunity to improve the availability. Last but not least, the solution will be proposed to improve the availability of the instruments. Based on the application of the proposed solution to the sample population, the availability of the instruments are improved, which can be seen from two visible impacts. First, the instruments orders are aligned with the forecast. Second, from the experiment analysis, the potential revenue increased by 22% which is obtained by repositioned the instruments in the region. In conclusion, instruments availability could be enhanced by improving the processes in all nodes in supply chain planning, as suggested in this report.