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Eight students and two supply chain management faculty went outside the classroom to learn more about the supply chain process at Cleveland Clinic. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) student organization heard a presentation by Mr. Bill Nonato, executive director of Cleveland Clinic, one of the premier health care facilities which provides cutting edge treatment for its patients.

  Mr. Nonato stated that healthcare is a ripe area for research in supply chain management.  The materials management and distribution systems are state of the art.  Dr. Amelia Carr, chair of the BGSU’s management department and one of the tour participants, gave the following account of the unique experience:

Cleveland Clinic uses a highly-automated system with guided vehicles and RFID and bar coding to manage the flow of inventory and transfer of information to keep its system of materials replenishment efficient.  The students and faculty had the opportunity to tour the entire underground facility where the AGVs travel with items such as linens, food, pharmaceuticals, trash and other items.  We also toured the warehouse, order picking facility, the disposal and hazardous materials treatment facility and the patient floors where daily stock keeping items are maintained. 

The entire materials management and distribution system is computerized to keep track of items within the system.  Cleveland Clinic benchmarks its materials management and distribution system with other leading companies outside of the healthcare industry, such as Wal-Mart and UPS.  As a result of our visit to the Cleveland Clinic, one of the students was selected to interview for a co-op with the Cleveland Clinic.  Not only did we learn about SCM at Cleveland Clinic, our students did a great job representing BGSU!

The tour was led by Mr. Roger Reese, service center director, and the program was organized by Ms. Christine Foley, department administrator, both from Cleveland Clinic.