September 10, 2024

Overcoming PPE inventory management and supply chain constraints in a pandemic scenario

Increase flexibility and reduce planning time for the supply of personal protective equipment within a network of stores and commercial spaces

Overcoming PPE inventory management and supply chain constraints in a pandemic scenario

At a glance

Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new security measures, making personal protective equipment (PPE) essential for in-person operations. Effectively managing PPE supply is critical to ensure service continuity and minimize risks to public health and legal liability. Our client, a large telco company, faced the challenge of supplying PPE across its network of offices, stores, warehouses, and cinemas, along with its employees.

Solution

The first step in creating the supply planning model involved mapping the entire network, from PPE types needed to the business areas and employees requiring them. The methodology predicts equipment needs and consumption over time. An interactive dashboard was developed to visualize trends and demand, providing both a comprehensive and detailed view for effective planning.

Results

The methodology provided the planning team with a comprehensive view of the network, reducing supply planning time by about 80%. The solution was quickly developed and deployed, thanks to a highly involved team. This speed was essential, as the rapidly changing legal framework demanded a flexible and complete tool to meet safety standards while ensuring all business areas could continue operations.

Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new security measures, making personal protective equipment (PPE) essential for in-person operations. Effectively managing PPE supply is critical to ensure service continuity and minimize risks to public health and legal liability. Our client, a large telco company, faced the challenge of supplying PPE across its network of offices, stores, warehouses, and cinemas, along with its employees.

Approach

Solution

The first step in creating the supply planning model involved mapping the entire network, from PPE types needed to the business areas and employees requiring them. The methodology predicts equipment needs and consumption over time. An interactive dashboard was developed to visualize trends and demand, providing both a comprehensive and detailed view for effective planning.

Results

The methodology provided the planning team with a comprehensive view of the network, reducing supply planning time by about 80%. The solution was quickly developed and deployed, thanks to a highly involved team. This speed was essential, as the rapidly changing legal framework demanded a flexible and complete tool to meet safety standards while ensuring all business areas could continue operations.

Our
AI-generated
summary

Our AI-generated summary

Our AI-generated summary

The Covid Pandemic scenario introduced an entire new range of security measures and precautions when in-person social interaction takes place. Personal protective equipment (PPE) is now a daily need in both front and back-office operations, and effectively managing its supply to customers, employees and business areas requires a systematic replenishment planning method.

The current context implies that the lack of such goods may result in a limitation of services that can be provided and on the availability of human resources, in the worst case scenario leading to risks to the public health and legal misconduct.

Our AI-generated summary

Our AI-generated summary

The first step in creating the supply planning model was to map the entire network, from the supply side related to the PPE types that are required to the demand side linked to the business areas and employees that require such equipment.

Our client, a large telco company, was challenged with the task of successfully supplying its network of offices, stores, warehouses, and cinemas, as well as all the personnel involved with the operations of the company with PPE.

The adopted methodology allowed the planning team to have a complete view of the network and to obtain efficiency gains, having shortened the planning time of the supply by about 80%.

The methodology developed is based on the prediction of individuals in each business area and calculates both the equipment needs as well as the consumption of each PPE over a certain time period.

An interactive dashboard was designed to better illustrate and display the trends and demand behavior, allowing the planning team to have both a holistic as well as a detailed view of the network.

The solution’s time to market was considerably quick, benefiting from a very involved team in both the development and deployment phases. Such intense work was crucial to the client, as the fast-paced rhythm in which the legal framework was changing required a flexible and complete tool to ensure that not only were the legal requirements fulfilled, as well as all the business areas were able to serve clients and operate within the new safety standards.

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