Does mobile consolidation solve the traditional consolidation centre conundrum? A feasibility study in the context of UK healthcare

Abstract

In 2010, the UK National Health Service (NHS) was responsible for 30% of all public sector emissions and 3% of the total CO2 emissions in England (European Centre for Environment & Human Health 2011), 65% of which were attributable to the procurement of goods and services (NHS SDU 2012). Previous research has linked this to an agile supply chain structure, better able to accommodate the unpredictable nature of demand within the medical supply chain (Bailey et al. 2013), which encourages sub-optimal product flows, leading to low vehicle load factors (McKone-Sweet et al. 2005; Jarret 2006; Costantino et al. 2010; Black and Zimmerman 2012; Azzi et al. 2013). As is typical with high delivery frequencies and low-fill rates, freight consolidation is often considered a viable solution (Woodburn 2005). However, despite the NHS Supply Chain (NHS SC), having a freight consolidation network established in 2006 (NHS Supply Chain 2014), supplier participation remains low with approximately 70 per opting-out according to annual hospital spend reports at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Increased supply chain costs, loss of visibility and control of products, and sub-optimal supplier logistics services were often cited as the main reasons for poor uptake resulting in high numbers of ad-hoc direct deliveries to hospital trusts. This paper attempts to address these issues by proposing a novel mobile consolidation centre (MCC) model for healthcare supply, using Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) as a case study

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Identifiers

ORCID for Tom Cherrett: orcid.org/0000-0003-0394-5459

ORCID for Ben Waterson: orcid.org/0000-0001-9817-7119

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