Ron Denton & Associates, LLC: Inventory, Space, and Workflow Optimization Made Easy
Angie A. Haggard, COOEstablished in 2014 by Ron Denton, a renowned healthcare supply chain leader, RDA serves as an independent supply chain consulting and contracted services company providing proven supply chain technology and interim management solutions to the healthcare industry. In an industry plagued by supply chain inefficiencies, RDA is changing the game with its proprietary, industry-transforming inventory and space optimization technology solution—Demand Logic™. RDA partnered with a software development company, vdR Group (www.vdr.com),to create an industry transforming technology. With this cloud-based application, RDA empowers healthcare organizations to streamline workflow and achieve sustainable cost savings by automating inventory and space optimization. "We deliver a turnkey, highly differentiated optimization and demand planning solution for reducing healthcare supply costs," says Dave Menne, Managing Partner at RDA.
Comprehensive Demand Planning Solution
As a next-gen, sustainable optimization tool for the supply chain resources, Demand Logic™ effectively simplifies and improves inventory and space management while also achieving labor optimization to provide on-going benefits. The user-friendly tool transforms complex manual analytics into an automated, sustainable, and proactive process at the system, facility, location, and item level.
Demand Logic™ performs predictive analysis tied to detailed and specific usage data characteristics and integrates predictive analytics with lean process re-engineering to achieve reduced supply and labor costs. As such, Demand Logic™ is the perfect solution to facilitate demand planning for aligning inventory levels, space, and workflow with the clients' current and future needs, based on utilization and dimensional analytics. "We leverage granular historical usage data and transactional data along with a series of proven algorithms to provide recommendations that are SKU specific," states Menne.
Demand Logic™ seamlessly complements existing MMIS ordering platforms, point-of-use systems, EHR, and WMS tools. Demand Logic™ integrates supply-demand with dimensional data, workflow with implementation resources, which enables RDA clients to achieve long term sustainable results with to optimize inventory investment, maximize space utilization, gain labor efficiencies, and increase product availability. RDA aims to improve the quality of care by reducing stock-outs and helping its clients stay focused on patient care and opportunities that drive maximum value. Menne explains, “We support our clients to evaluate current business practices, discern the fragmented processes, and reduce touch points. We ensure that there’s discipline and a definite prescribed approach to performing all tasks. By blending the science and math necessary for space optimization, we enable our clients to right-size their inventory so that they know how much inventory they truly need…in minutes versus months." In addition, Demand Logic™ equips its customers to “sustain the gains” after the conclusion of the performance improvement engagement by eliminating manual intervention and review. “We provide our clients with valuable insights to ensure long-term sustainability and maintenance of the gains,” says Angie A. Haggard, COO at RDA.
On the workflow front, RDA evaluates the current processes and owners and then using data, identifies the recommendations that will drive key improvements.
Driven by a “Management by Exception” philosophy, RDA provides notifications and emails on key insights and recommendations requiring action to streamline the decision-making process. “Instead of requiring end users to look through hundreds of lines of data, we notify and inform the users when action is needed based on the key opportunity insights. If action is not taken by the end user, the notification is escalated to the individual’s supervisor and sends recurring notifications until it is addressed,” states Angie. "We go beyond optimizing the inventory. We have workflow intelligence built into our product, which is backed by years of experience and subject matter expertise of our management team," adds Angie.
Menne highlights that one of the biggest differentiators of Demand Logic™ is that it’s not a “one size fits all” technology. It’s an incredibly customizable, scalable, and robust platform that allows for rapid modifications based on client requests. Over the years, the Demand Logic™ solution has been successfully deployed in several healthcare organizations. For instance, RDA helped a Tennessee health system that was once struggling to turn around one of its hospital’s inventory management programs. The hospital was experiencing poor usage of supply space and high clinical involvement in product ordering due to a lack of confidence in supply chain support. Due to too many stock-outs, clinicians and material technicians were unable to comply with “best practice” inventory procedures. PAR levels were based on subjective nursing assessment, which resulted in frequent stock-outs and urgent system workaround orders, inefficient inventory replenishment activities, and poor utilization of storage space. In addition, the hospital was building a new tower (with limited supply storage space), and they lacked clarity on the total amount of supplies required. The goal was for each of the new tower's supply storage areas to be organized in a consistent layout for the clinician’s ease of use.
The hospital administration approached RDA to leverage Demand Logic™ to reduce clinical involvement, optimize inventory levels, develop consistent supply storage layouts, and calculate inventory and space needs for the new tower. RDA helped the hospital’s supply chain department implement Demand Logic™ using a data-driven approach to establish optimal inventory levels and plan for future supply storage space requirements. RDA also worked with key supply chain and clinical stakeholders using its supply chain best practices to customize the ordering and replenishment processes in order to reduce clinical involvement. This freed up valuable space for critical care supply levels, reduced product touches by 50 percent, improved overall product availability to 99 percent, and decreased stock-outs at point-of-use by 85 percent. The new ordering practices improved overall operational efficiencies and reduced replenishment line activity by 35 percent.
On another occasion, RDA successfully performed inventory optimization and space planning for a new offsite warehouse and onsite storeroom of a large academic healthcare center. RDA’s Demand Logic™ solution provided the needed predictive analytics to develop space requirements and stocking levels down to the SKU level to satisfy a ten-year growth plan. RDA also helped the client achieve an average of 25-35 percent improvement in space utilization.
Continuous Improvement with Demand Logic™
The company has recently released the latest version of Demand Logic™ and plans to imbibe its continuous improvement philosophy in the platform. “We aim to enhance and expand the reporting capabilities of our platform. We envision Demand Logic™ as the go-to application for supporting supply chain excellence in healthcare organization,” notes Menne.
Outperforming Competitors with Expertise
We deliver a turnkey, highly differentiated optimization and demand planning solution for reducing healthcare supply costs
Menne highlights that one of the biggest differentiators of Demand Logic™ is that it’s not a “one size fits all” technology. It’s an incredibly customizable, scalable, and robust platform that allows for rapid modifications based on client requests. Over the years, the Demand Logic™ solution has been successfully deployed in several healthcare organizations. For instance, RDA helped a Tennessee health system that was once struggling to turn around one of its hospital’s inventory management programs. The hospital was experiencing poor usage of supply space and high clinical involvement in product ordering due to a lack of confidence in supply chain support. Due to too many stock-outs, clinicians and material technicians were unable to comply with “best practice” inventory procedures. PAR levels were based on subjective nursing assessment, which resulted in frequent stock-outs and urgent system workaround orders, inefficient inventory replenishment activities, and poor utilization of storage space. In addition, the hospital was building a new tower (with limited supply storage space), and they lacked clarity on the total amount of supplies required. The goal was for each of the new tower's supply storage areas to be organized in a consistent layout for the clinician’s ease of use.
The hospital administration approached RDA to leverage Demand Logic™ to reduce clinical involvement, optimize inventory levels, develop consistent supply storage layouts, and calculate inventory and space needs for the new tower. RDA helped the hospital’s supply chain department implement Demand Logic™ using a data-driven approach to establish optimal inventory levels and plan for future supply storage space requirements. RDA also worked with key supply chain and clinical stakeholders using its supply chain best practices to customize the ordering and replenishment processes in order to reduce clinical involvement. This freed up valuable space for critical care supply levels, reduced product touches by 50 percent, improved overall product availability to 99 percent, and decreased stock-outs at point-of-use by 85 percent. The new ordering practices improved overall operational efficiencies and reduced replenishment line activity by 35 percent.
On another occasion, RDA successfully performed inventory optimization and space planning for a new offsite warehouse and onsite storeroom of a large academic healthcare center. RDA’s Demand Logic™ solution provided the needed predictive analytics to develop space requirements and stocking levels down to the SKU level to satisfy a ten-year growth plan. RDA also helped the client achieve an average of 25-35 percent improvement in space utilization.
Continuous Improvement with Demand Logic™
The company has recently released the latest version of Demand Logic™ and plans to imbibe its continuous improvement philosophy in the platform. “We aim to enhance and expand the reporting capabilities of our platform. We envision Demand Logic™ as the go-to application for supporting supply chain excellence in healthcare organization,” notes Menne.
Company
Ron Denton & Associates, LLC
Headquarters
Knoxville, TN
Management
Angie A. Haggard, COO
and Ron Denton, CEO & Founder and Dave Menne, Managing Partner
Description
Ron Denton & Associates, LLC is an independent supply chain consulting and contracted services company providing proven supply chain technology and interim management solutions to the healthcare industry. With this cloud-based application, RDA empowers healthcare organizations to streamline workflow and achieve sustainable cost savings by automating inventory and space optimization. As a next-gen, sustainable optimization tool for the supply chain resources, Demand Logic™ effectively simplifies and improves inventory and space management while also achieving labor optimization to provide on-going benefits. The user-friendly tool transforms complex manual analytics into an automated, sustainable, and proactive process at the system, facility, location, and item level
