December 2024 – The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
Senior Vice President, Supply Chain, Corewell Health
As the Senior Vice President of supply chain for Corewell Health, Andrea Poulopoulos and her team are responsible for managing nearly $4 billion in total spend across both the direct and indirect continuum. In addition to sourcing and contracting supply chain operations, Poulopoulos also leads sustainability, supplier diversity and supplier related or material related resiliency.
What are some recent or current projects you’ve been excited to work on?
Corewell Health’s integration over the last two years. We have worked incredibly hard throughout that time to streamline operations across our legacy organizations, as well as leverage our spend and supplier contracts in a way that allows us to maximize value. While we were an early adopter from a supply chain perspective in working through the challenges of the integration and standing up what is now Corewell Health, some of that work continues to linger, and likely will for years to come.
In terms of future projects, we will be opening a new automated Consolidated Service Center (CSC) in Q3 of 2026 that will support all of Corewell Health. Currently we have distribution centers on both sides of the state of Michigan. Our future state CSC will essentially reduce that footprint down to one 300,000-square-foot facility. We’re looking to automate processes that drive efficiency while ensuring our operational team members can focus on the stuff that really matters.
What has it been like planning and preparing for the CSC, especially with so many marketplace disruptions?
First and foremost, we have a labor scarcity issue. We continue to work diligently to recruit team members to take on the roles of those needed within our CSCs or current state distribution centers, but it’s tough, frankly, to find potential team members that are interested in doing the work. The automation will allow us to reduce our reliance on more conventional labor and create opportunities for us to redirect the talents of those team members to what would be considered more impactful work for the organization.
As we think about what we will inventory in our CSC, we are finding ourselves in this position of taking a step back and evaluating criticality, as well as shortage related data, that we have available to ensure that we are stocking some of these risk materials or medical supplies to a greater extent with a more thoughtful strategy than what we have traditionally. This will, in turn, mitigate many of the back-order challenges that we currently face due to a reliance on suppliers and their distribution networks. Our future CSC will create an opportunity for us to sit in the driver’s seat and empower supply chain team members to make decisions that we haven’t been able to historically.
What makes your supply chain team tick? How do you measure success beyond just numbers?
We have an incredibly talented, dedicated team across the state of Michigan. The integration of Corewell Health has allowed us an opportunity to expand our school of thought, perspectives, and ideas and come together to determine what is best for Corewell Health. We’ve been able to ask, “what do we need to do” or “where is there the need for alignment” to ensure that we’re positioned well for the future. The team is comprised of individuals that have shown a willingness and an excitement to look beyond what was considered the norm and be flexible and open to change.
We are obviously focused on numbers as a supply chain team. But in addition to savings and ensuring that we are bringing value back to the organization through cost avoidance or reduction in expenses year over year, we also have a robust scorecard of metrics that we track across the continuum. Each is indicative of a specific area that we deem critical to the organization. Product standardization is one example. Our sustainability related goals, supplier performance management, and supplier diversity are others. We have developed an approach that allows us to both celebrate the soft wins, but also the opportunity to reference quantitative objective metrics to help us understand how we’re trending and further celebrate those wins as we continue to make progress.
Looking at the headlines in recent years – inflation, global disruptors, shipping issues, cyber security, etc. – how do you try to anticipate and prepare your team for those uncertainties?
There are two levers that I often pull. One is maintaining a network across the healthcare supply chain. Each of us faces very similar challenges day to day, but there are also instances in which there are unique challenges or hurdles which the trickle-down hasn’t yet occurred.
Maintaining relationships with other health system supply chain leaders and supply chain focused third parties has helped to ensure that I am staying abreast of what may come our way. It’s important to leverage lessons learned from those that have already faced the same challenges and are willing to share their experiences to ensure others don’t make the same missteps.
Secondly, we also work alongside our GPO, Vizient, and consider them a partner and extension of the supply chain team. Vizient does an excellent job in ensuring that we’re staying in front of what may come in terms of challenges and mitigating them appropriately in advance.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve received in your career?
Your team is your superpower. Moving into this role and having the opportunity to be responsible for supply chain at Corewell Health has only further confirmed the fact that having the right people in the right seats who are dedicated and truly focused on the mission, vision, and values of the organization is what is necessary to be successful. My success is dependent on their success; in that we have to work as a team rooted in trust to be able to accomplish all that we have ahead of us. The challenges that we’re currently facing are certainly not going to be in our rear-view window anytime soon.