Real-Time Supply Chain Analysis: A Critical COVID-19 Response Tool

As the U.S. addresses the impact of COVID-19 and the associated surge in demand for vital resources, there is a critical need for federal decision-makers to readily understand the real-time supply chain impacts. Reducing the time to insight is critical to making decisions and determining mitigations, such as pre-positioning within the medical supply chain, to most effectively and efficiently respond to the ongoing pandemic.

In many disaster scenarios, when demand exceeds local supply, it can be offset by stockpiles, supplies from nearby jurisdictions, and/or a surge in manufacturing. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased global demand for all the same resources, while simultaneously impacting all supply chains. The normal mitigation tools one would use during an emergency are not available and, as such, the supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19 necessitate a strategic and integrated approach to managing the risk.

Government agencies need a team of supply chain, data science, and academic, public, and private sector experts to rapidly respond to the COVID-19 issue. LMI has nearly 60 years of experience providing logistics and healthcare expertise to the U.S. government, access to near real-time data, and a team of data modeling and supply chain experts. LMI’s partners include academic institutions with expertise in disease spread modeling, private sector hospital supply chain support organizations, supply chain risk platform providers, and public sector consulting organizations with pandemic response experience. We enable decision-makers to use a data-driven analytics approach to identify supply chain risks and determine mitigation options. LMI's existing data sources—from private industry, academica, and the government—can support the immediate analysis of areas such as supply chains for medical devices, testing kits, personal protective equipment, and countermeasures, in addition to bed capacity. Our team’s extensive experience with the government will ensure end-user requirements are met.

Our team’s existing data sources—from private industry, academica, and the government—can support the immediate analysis of areas such as supply chains for medical devices, testing kits, personal protective equipment, and countermeasures, in addition to bed capacity.

The Challenge

Currently, industry and government agencies (federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial) are responding to the crisis without improved data sharing, resulting in several mission-critical problems:

Hospitals serving COVID-19 patients are running out of critical supplies and unable to track supplies being sent to their locations.
Government agencies and medical treatment facilities are unsure of actual shipment amounts or where shortfalls exist at both the national, state, and county levels.
Multiple systems of record cannot be viewed concurrently to gain an operational picture, and the systems are not being updated in real-time.
There is no standard for private sector industry to relay production or inventory availability to the government.

As a result, industry and government cannot accurately determine if they are prepared to respond or where resources should be allocated to avoid the maldistribution of resources. By bringing together hospital leaders, distributors, group purchasing organizations (GPOs), hospital associations, manufacturers, and analytics companies, LMI will build a complete picture of the supplies required to fight this crisis. Utilizing a suite of models to predict daily need, we can create a standardized way to report real inventory numbers and adapt to each region’s real-time supply requirements.

The Way Forward

With access to the right data and faster insights, decision-makers will be able to make better data-informed decisions to support a dynamic medical supply chain for COVID-19 response. LMI is proposing a new approach to data collection and management to provide decision-makers with real-time supply information, overlaid with projections on the spread of COVID-19.

Read This White Paper

Contact Nathan Sanders, director of health markets for the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, to receive this white paper and more information about LMI's COVID-19 response capabilities.

Contact Nathan

About the Author

Kerry has worked with the Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, NASA, Amtrak, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization to improve the resilience of their supply chains.

Kerry McCarthy,
Principal, Supply Chain Solutions

Meet Kerry

Learn More About LMI's COVID-19 Response

We're in This Together

LMI prides itself on bringing the best minds to bear on government’s most complex problems. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, that commitment has never been more evident. We stand with our federal clients on the front lines of the COVID-19 response efforts, with some employees going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that clients continue to achieve mission success.

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