Reference no: EM133774409

Question 

In early 2020 a mid-sized hospital was faced with a major problem, and the supply chain manager was expected to solve it. Until that time the hospital used a few hundred protective face masks per day, mainly for surgical procedures and healthcare workers working with patients having contagious diseases. Now the COVID-19 pandemic was declared and suddenly all hospital employees and patients were required to wear protective masks. The usage went from less than a thousand a day up to as high as 4000 per day. In addition, the hospital typically used a lean replenishment approach where they kept only a two-week supply of most supplies. They had regular contracts with suppliers to replenish every week up to the two-week requirement level. They soon discovered that the suppliers suddenly had many customers (including many other hospitals) who were in a similar condition and all were pressuring the supplier to significantly increase their order size. The condition was made worse in this particular hospital because the administration decided there was too much risk in the lean approach (because of this supply problem) so they changed the policy and now wanted the supply chain manager to keep a minimum of three month's.