Skip to main content Skip to footer

Challenge

Adapting the supply chain for a world where nothing stands still

With both technological and medical advances occurring at an ever-faster rate, today’s healthcare technology industry is a complex and dynamic place in which to operate.

A decade ago, one big-ticket global medical technology company found this era of constant change was stretching its spare parts supply chain to the limit. Dispersed and fragmented legacy systems weren’t providing the total visibility into inventory it needed in all its markets around the world.

That was impacting the company’s ability to achieve acceptable fill rates for the vast array of parts needed to maintain and service the healthcare-critical products its customers – and their patients – relied on every day.

To stay in front of the competition, this healthcare technology leader recognized the need to rethink its supply chain. So, they asked Accenture to help boost their agility and responsiveness through technology-led innovation.

What Accenture did

Switching on the intelligent supply chain with SynOps

Over a ten-year relationship, Accenture has helped this company centralize and standardize inventory management, while boosting productivity through intelligent operations and Accenture’s unique SynOps growth engine

Accenture’s decision model incorporates numerous downstream impacts – retraining needs, inventory costs, knock-on changes to other parts and more – ensuring technicians make more informed decisions and avoid potentially costly and disruptive choices.

Brilliant basics

We’re helping to ensure the timely shipments of spare parts across the supply chain and managing reverse logistics for defective parts.

Lower inventory

We’re providing root cause analysis of lead times and inventory bloating, working with vendors to accelerate processes and optimize inventory.

Cost-effective operations

Our granular analytics for inventory and field services mean cost rises are automatically alerted and can be investigated before they escalate.

Lifecycle management

We’re supporting automatic monitoring of part lifecycles, forecasting changes in demand and predicting the likely point of obsolescence.

Smarter maintenance decisions

Our new decision model helps the company make more informed choices about refurbishing or redesigning parts – decisions with wide-ranging impacts.

Real-time visibility

Our real-time monitoring and analysis of the spare parts supply chain provides 75 different views across business units and regions.

People and culture

A significant upgrade in back-office productivity

By standardizing, centralizing, and optimizing global supply chain processes, and creating a culture of continuous improvement, Accenture helped this global healthcare technology company boost overall back-office productivity by up to 12% annually.

What’s more, the company’s previous fragmented, poor-visibility inventory management model is a thing of the past. Thanks to the SynOps for supply chain human-machine growth engine, Accenture has worked to continuously improve service parts fill rates – one of the company’s most critical measures of success.

In total, the relationship has delivered more than $130 million in combined business impact.

$47m

Labor and material cost savings through customer service analytics co-innovation workshops.

$45m

Corrective maintenance savings by reducing service parts costs.

$17m

Inventory reduction by reducing supplier lead times.

$6m

Profit and loss (P&L) impact through inventory planning models.

$5m

Reverse supply chain inventory reduction.

Value delivered

The company has come a long way from the days of the fragmented inventory management model that offered limited visibility into operations and leaving them with minimal opportunities to improve performance. By partnering with Accenture to deploy a streamlined and centralized model, accessing highly skilled talent, and innovation capabilities they have been able to position their spare parts supply chain to continue to excel in today’s dynamic healthcare environment.

Related capabilities

Supply Chain BPS

Manage and streamline your supply chain with an agile global network.

Procurement BPS

The as-a-Service economy presents an opportunity to take another look at process optimization and efficiency.

Finance and Accounting BPS

Transform finance from transactional to strategic with an intelligent operating model.
Stay in the know with our newsletter
Subscribe