Research Paper on Supply Chain Management: Product Dev, Sourcing, Prod, Logistics, Info Sys

Introduction

Supply Chain Management entails the planning and control over all the activities that are involved in the production or service delivery process to the delivery of the final product to the consumer (Snyder & Shen, 2019). Supply chain firms aim to develop a supply chain effectively and efficiently to achieve a competitive advantage for a company in the market share. Supply Chain activities involve: product development, sourcing, production, logistics, and information systems (Snyder & Shen, 2019). The supply chain is made up of organizations connected through physical flow and information flows. The diverse nature of critical organisational units that play a core role to fostering sterling performance in service at the corporate level for the betterment of the quality of services.

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BMI Healthcare is capable of limiting the healthcare services to the levels of quality desired and advocated for under the NHS workability structure. The organisation has made a wide range of attempted programs to addressing the constraints to long-term sustainable standards of public health. The BMI Healthcare is dedicated to meeting the goals of the patients through the strategic inclusion and engagement of suppliers and distributors to better the way a top-level of quality can be attained and retain (Snyder & Shen, 2019). Notably, resources and legislations pave the way for the enactment of strategies and organisational cultures that are mainly directed toward enabling a better life for all. Since supply chain management, operations management, and logistics are core theoretical concepts in healthcare, BMI Healthcare makes strategic pursuance to adding value to the business by satisfied stakeholders such as clients, employees, and facilitators.Operation Management

Operation management is the process of planning, organising, and supervising the production and manufacture of goods as well as the provision of services (Dobrzykowski & Tarafdar, 2015). Operations management serves to ensure that inputs are effectively turned into outputs. Conversely, contributions refer to equipment, materials, human resource, and technology. According to Dobrzykowski and Tarafdar (2015), operation management includes support functions that ensure the effective running of the core activity. For instance, the core activities of a company are human resources and accounting and financial functions. Operation management allows the view of a company in a far-reaching perspective giving insight into the company's performance and the changes to be applied (Dobrzykowski & Tarafdar, 2015). The basic function of a business organization involves finance, marketing, and operations.

Logistics Management

Logistics management is a component of supply chain management used to obtain, produce and distribute products effectively (Schonsleben, 2018). Logistics involves the management of order processing, warehousing, material handling, and packaging. Logistics management can be summarized as the tasks involved to get the right goods to the right customer at the right time (Schonsleben, 2018). Logistics is a swathe organisational concept that amalgamates several implementation activities and organised movements, accommodation of troops, and equipment. The difference between logistics, operations and supply chain management is the roles they play (Snyder & Shen, 2019). Operation management is mainly associated with the production of goods, while Logistics defines the storage and movement of products to the consumer. SCM denotes the entire process involved from production to delivery of goods to the consumer.

Supply Chain Management and Logistics in the BMI Healthcare Company

The BMI Healthcare is a private and independently functional healthcare provider in the UK. The organisation operates 59 healthcare facilities across the United Kingdom (BMI Healthcare, 2019). The hospitals are equipped with modern equipment that befits the delivery of quality healthcare services. BMI Healthcare offers enhanced and high standard services (BMI Healthcare, 2019). The management of people in operations and supply chains, as well as managing quality, are at the core of SCM and logistics in healthcare (BMI Healthcare, 2019). The United Kingdom's BMI Healthcare is typically dependent on organisational cultures and quality control effectiveness across the entire chain of suppliers and distributions to leverage the productivity in light of the stakeholder management theory in practice (BMI Healthcare, 2019).

Like any other success-driven business, BMI Healthcare strives to meet and quench the needs of the targeted stakeholders in the operations and dealings arena. Notably, the essence of strategic planning and execution is to ensure growth and strategic progress of the organisation in light of satisfaction to the prior-benchmarked goals and objectives (Dobrzykowski et al., 2014). The concepts of supply chain management and logistics are entirely applicable at BMI Healthcare to pave the way for the use of quality products, materials, and other forms of capital that guarantee goal attainment through assured competencies and satisfactory performance. Healthcare services are dependent on influential key performance indicators such as the quality of services and products that are used to foster caregiving and medical attention to patients and healthy people.

TQM tools for Quality Assurance at the BMI Healthcare

Goal attainment is one of the critical reasons behind the adoption of informed supply chain management and logistics system at BMI Healthcare in the United Kingdom. The National Health Service (NHS), which is in charge of policymaking and regulatory reinstitution in the care and medical service sector, acknowledge and insists on quality in the healthcare services to meet the needs and requirements of the citizens. Gomes and Romao (2018) infer that there are seven tools that are applied in BPOS for quality to cross-check for malfunction possibilities, risks, and uncertainties when it comes to dealing with the supply chain and logistics concepts of the organisation to enable influential goal attainment. According to Gomes and Romao (2018), the seven quality control tools can be used to leverage the manner in which organisational goals are pursued. In healthcare, quality can be defined from different perspectives.

First, the moment hospitals will be capable of alleviating alarming cases of health, quality becomes apparent. The capacity of hospitals such as BMI Healthcare can be analytically inferred from cases of hospital revisits, persistent health disorders, high vulnerability to contagious ailments, high rates of ineffective diagnosis, treatment, and therapeutic measures that are intentionally directed toward addressing informed diseases (Magar & Shinde, 2014). The seven QC tools are histogram, stratification (divide and conquer doctrine), tally sheet (check sheet), the Pareto chart (80/20) rule, Shewhart chart (Scatter diagram), control chart, and the cause-and-effect diagram (Ishikawa or "fishbone" diagram) (Magar & Shinde, 2014).

Analytically, BMI Healthcare is capable of manifesting the correct use of the seven QC tools to monitor performance while eyeing on the potentiality to foster effective improvements in the healthcare system. The organisation makes use of indicative data to inform progressive strategies. This act is founded on the premise that analyses make it possible for managers to discern erroneous causalities, which deter goal attainment through quality compromises. In essence, the seven elements of the QC tool are limited to the use of evidence-based data to infer the appropriate meaning from the accessible data (Magar & Shinde, 2014). Data analyses pave the way for the critical discerning of the meaning out of the readily accessible information. The seven elements of the QC tool work simultaneously toward addressing the issue of quality in healthcare services.

The Arnold Palmer Hospital has registered remarkable levels of quality in healthcare services through assurance measures that mainly focus on mining of data, which can be manipulated into resourceful information when it comes to sustaining competencies and sterling performance for the betterment of life in general. Notably, the BMI Healthcare organisation does make significant efforts to assure quality while providing a wide range of medical and health care services. To account for its position, the BMI Healthcare organisation makes use of the seven aspects in the QC tool to analyse ad detect reliable suppliers of medication and healthcare equipment.

Quality is detectable from the indicators of some of the seven elements of this analytical tool. For instance, the Pareto chart (80/20) rule is used by the BMI Healthcare to acknowledge the variations in advantages and disadvantages of engaging and seeking an inclusion with other facility providers and caretakers to differentiate what is relevant from what is unnecessary (Magar & Shinde, 2014). The Pareto chart (80/20) rule is founded on the notion that advantageous firms could be capable of providing 80% of the satisfactory needs (Magar & Shinde, 2014). However, as much as their competitors could offer the remaining 20%, the law of prioritisation dictates what decisions make more sense and value for an organisation. This approach has been optimised at BMI Healthcare to ensure the patients and stakeholders of the industry are satisfied and fairly beneficial from the adopted supply chain management and logistics framework.

Quality assurance is wholly built on the results garnered from analyses (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). These results seemingly guarantee the BMI Healthcare's capacity to map potential suppliers and distributors on maps that indicate the various strata depending on the quality of delivery among other decision-making units (DMUs) (Chang & Lu, 1995).

The Management of People in BMI Healthcare

Healthcare practices are entirely reliant on the execution of sound decisions and directives, which are adopted explicitly in favour of the public. According to Dobrzykowski and Tarafdar (2015), healthcare services are built on a compassionate feeling toward the pain and losses patients go through. The phenomenon in healthcare facilities such as BMI Healthcare leads to a call for excellent management of people to build an acceptable organisational culture that prioritises the needs of the patients and stakeholders, for instance. There have occurred many changes and shifts in most organisational structures. The dynamism is triggered by emergent disorders and situations that call for effectively operationalised strategies in corporates at all functional levels. Notably, the containment of these changes calls for informed management of the people through well-defined human resources management (HRM) strategies.

According to Dobrzykowski, Deilami, Hong, and Kim (2014), inclusive transformational leadership styles befit organisations like healthcare facilities owing to the capacity to create a culture of competency, alertness, and result-orientated approach. This postulate is built on the fact that inclusive transformational leadership styles are founded on the engagement of employees, their inclusion, analysis and representation to detect and address the issues that could lag their capacities to perform (Gopee & Galloway, 2017). Inclusive transformational leadership styles also pave the way for direct interaction with the people that matter to organisational initiatives such as alignment of the supply chain and logistics management systems at the BMI Healthcare to pave the way for organisational effectiveness whereby operational goals an...