It is one of the most common situations in hospital logistics. A nursing unit urgently asks for a product that has run out, while a few floors away the same product sits in a cupboard in quantities that will not be used before it expires. Both problems have the same origin: stock that is not managed as a single system.
Where the imbalance comes from
Each unit protects itself. When supply has failed before, teams keep a little extra "just in case", and that reserve is invisible to the rest of the hospital. Replenishment often follows habit or a fixed calendar rather than what has actually been consumed. And consumption is rarely recorded at the moment of use, so the warehouse plans with information that is already out of date.
The result is a hospital that holds more stock than it needs overall, and still suffers shortages at specific points. Nurses spend time searching, borrowing between units and counting, which is time taken from patient care.
What changes the situation
- Defined stock levels for each location, agreed with the unit and reviewed periodically, not fixed once and forgotten.
- Pull replenishment: what is replaced is what has been consumed. Kanban systems, with or without RFID, make this visible and simple.
- Visibility of stock by location, so that the warehouse and the units see the same picture.
- Recording consumption as close as possible to the point of use, without adding steps for clinical staff.
Start where the problem is visible
There is no need to change the whole hospital at once. A unit with frequent shortages, or a store with high expiry losses, is a good starting point: the baseline is clear, the team feels the problem and the improvement can be measured. What works there becomes the model for the next unit.